There she goes, there she goes again

Span has linked to my link about the S59 protests and is now hosting a discussion on repeal. I am linking back in a great circle of link.

Meanwhile PC also has photographs of the protests, including one of the same holder of a really good placard whom I had featured and her fellow protesters, whom he refers to as "plain Janes".

Now, as it turns out, I was writing a piece on Objectivist Aesthetics; really, I was. My thesis will now have to be revised. It seems that PC would prefer to see photographs of Lindsay Perigo (wearing a shirt that says "politically incorrect" when "morbidly obese" would be more appropriate) to a woman in the upper quartile of attractiveness (trust me, I am an Aesthetician) and her not unbecoming sisters.

This worries me. I had thought that Objectivists had a standard of beauty. I now realise how wrong I was.

Shiny, shiny, shiny boots of leather

Focus on the Family New Zealand has come out whining after the Prime Minister attacked them in Parliament. While Section 59 was being discussed in Question Time, Dr Michael Cullen asked the PM a somewhat helpful question:

Hon Dr Michael Cullen: Is one of the groups advertising against the bill a group called Focus on the Family, which was founded by Dr James Dobson, and is this the same Dr James Dobson who has likened proponents of gay marriage to the Nazis, backed political candidates who called for the execution of abortion providers, defined embryonic stem cell research as State-funded cannibalism, and urged Christian parents to pull their children out of public school systems; if so, would she rather be associated with UNICEF, Save the Children, Plunket, and Barnados in supporting the bill?

The PM replied:

I most certainly would rather be associated with Plunket, Barnados, and Save the Children, which are reputable organisations that stand for decent values and for not having violence in our homes, than with the extreme right-wing fundamentalist groups that do not care about those issues.

Piqued by these comments, FOFNZ sent out a media release called "Government needs to learn to sling mud that’s accurate." Sorry to be pedantic (no I am not) but shouldn't that be "Government needs to learn to sling mud accurately?" After all, accuracy is not a quality possessed by mud but it is one that can be associated with slinging. Oh, that analytical philosophy has got me in it's spell...

Anyway FOFNZ's point was that it didn't have one: Kiwi Mums and Dads want to thrash their kids, Dr Dobson is a great man and the Government hasn't spend one cent on newspaper advertising. See, it stands to reason, doesn't it? FOFNZ also warns that "there is a real danger when politicians and the media take US-centric language and transfer it to our culture."

There is also a real danger when fundies talk bollocks. The briefest glance at the FOFNZ website shows it is steeped in language that is not just US-centric but fundy-centric. Leaving aside the Purity camp for the time being (soon, my pretties, soon), follow the links to the Pure Intimacy site. Turn down the lights and read. It's all about "recovering the heart of sexuality." No, not really, its about gays and girls and gay girls. Fancy some Endogenous Temptation and Spiritual Warfare?

The desire to masturbate, to indulge in a book or movie that leads to sexual fantasy and masturbation, temptation to seek out a sexual contact, or to just allow fantasies to go unchecked, can become a major problem. When these feelings affect night-time dreaming, too, a woman may become depressed and guilty over how out of control she is.

How about a Christian sex guide or dating advice from Christian stars. I know; it's all a bit too up close and personal. Yuck, yuck, yuck.

So how about Intelligent Design? What's that got to do with the family, I hear you ask? Nothing, but these are fundies. In fact, not so long ago, FOFNZ sent a DVD about ID to every secondary school in NZ.

And what about this James Dobson, then? One of the most powerful evangelicals in the USofA, hotline to the President, etc, etc; he runs a huge organisation, dispensing advice and judgement in equal amounts. Here's some advice from his 1977 book, Dare to Discipline (still yourselves, it is not like that; really it isn't)

"[P]ain is a marvellous purifier... There is a muscle, lying snugly against the base of the neck ... When firmly squeezed, it sends little messengers to the brain saying, 'This hurts; avoid recurrence at all costs.'"

"I suggest [spanking with] a switch (a small, flexible twig from a tree) or a paddle… if it doesn't hurt it doesn't motivate."

And here's some judgement: "Communities do not let prostitutes, pedophiles, voyeurs, adulterers, and those who sexually prefer animals to publicly celebrate their lifestyles, so why should homosexuals get such privileges?"

And then there is SpongeBob. I know I like to mention this at any opportunity, but it is just so darn funny. Dr James Dobson accused SpongeBob SquarePants of being pro-gay, because he appeared in a video about cooperation and unity (socialist values) made by Nile Rogers, the writer of "We are Family." The New York Times covered the story with one of its best headlines ever: Conservatives Pick Soft Target. If you can't be bothered to register, here is news from the BBC. The full rap is on Toon Zone.

And then there is the misuse of scientific data. I could go on; I could go on all day. But suffice to say, Dr James Dobson is a bully, a fraud and a something of a creep.

The uncertainty of the poet

Faith, my flatmate, gave me some bananas. I was reminded of the video on Godtube, to which I linked a few posts back. Here is a viewers' guide to that video, which can be seen in full here.

The two men who present this video are sitting on high stools which are on a rug beside a lake. These men obviously want to be close to nature, which is God's Creation, but not that close.

The man on the right is Kirk Cameron. He is an actor. He played Mike Seaver in Growing Pains. When his acting career stalled... sorry, when he accepted Jesus into his heart, he started evangelising with the man on the left.

The man on the left is Ray Comfort. He is a New Zealander. He came from Christchurch. He is very big in the United States, where he preaches outdoors. He lives in Bellflower, California, a long way from New Zealand. For over two years, he preached outside the Bellflower courthouse almost every day, until the judge issued a court order forbidding him from preaching on court property; the judge had earlier made the public property outside the court, where Comfort preached, court property. Comfort sells millions of tracts each year. Most are of the same intellectual standard as this video.

The type of banana which Ray uses in this video is a Cavendish. It was not created by God but developed by banana growers from a plant found in Saigon. It is one of 300 varieties of banana, many of which are quite difficult to either hold or eat. The banana Ray is holding and eating is a clone. Cavendish bananas are propagated asexually. The Cavendish is the most popular cultivar of banana in the West, although its future is threatened by a fungal disease called Fusarium wilt. Whether God designed Fusarium wilt may be known only to Ray, who claims to receive his teachings directly from Jesus. There are no bananas in the Bible.

The people to whom Kirk talks in this video are claimed to be Atheists, although Ray says they are really agnostics. Ray does not really know what is an Atheist, although that does not matter to him.

Kirk does not seem to have much success using Ray's techniques for sharing the Love of Christ with Atheists. The first man to whom Kirk talks does not seem that bright. The second one is an Intellectual, as can be seen by his glasses and beard. His comments have been edited, crudely. The other Atheist is a woman. She is hot. She is also smarter than Kirk. Neither Kirk nor Ray realise this.

This video contains absolutely no homoerotic sub-text.

The painting above is by Giorgio di Chirico. Making images like this contravenes the Second Commandment, a fact that men like Ray and Kirk never mention. This painting inspired this poem by Wendy Cope.

Carnival of the intellectuals

Here are a few things I have been reading, some found on 3 Quarks Daily, others on Arts and Letters Daily and others still which I found myself. The NY Times articles require you to create an account, which you should do because it's free and its fun. Feel free to comment and add your own links.


Christopher Reid on Howard Hodgkin: Smallness of scale, which nowadays means domestic, has tempted a number of commentators to disparage Hodgkin as a latter-day Omega Workshop bibeloteur. Being related to Roger Fry and having a studio in Bloomsbury probably haven’t helped, but the put-down is facile and misleading. Not only is he vastly more skilful than either Fry, Vanessa Bell or Duncan Grant, but his understanding of what painting can and should do exceeds theirs as well.

Gavin Stamp on Scotland's lost houses: The architectural historian is soon confronted by the melancholy truth that human beings can take as much pleasure in destruction as construction.

Clive James on Leni Riefenstahl: After unrolling her usual impatient rigmarole about having known nothing about any Nazi atrocities, Leni made the mistake of saying that she sometimes, against her will, had to do what Goebbels wanted, because she was afraid of being sent to a concentration camp. Schulberg asked why she should have been afraid of that, if she didn’t know that concentration camps existed.

Adam Kirsch on Clive James: Mr. James's definition of humanism is as good as any ever proposed: It is "a propensity to increase the variety of the created world rather than reduce it." In this book teeming with variety, he offers proof that such a humanism is still our best chance for a rich, happy, and decent life.

Simon Jenkins on Terry Eagleton: As a cultural historian Eagleton has made a thing of typologies. He can strut the campus juggling modernism, postmodernism, neo-structuralism and pseudo-reductionism until girls swoon and review editors queue for autographs

The truth about blogging: Though the numbers and breadth of blogging are indeed astonishing, it's not at all clear what the numbers mean, if they mean anything at all. Much of what constitutes the phenomenon of blogging is apt to be inconsequential for the simple but powerful fact that nobody reads most of them. That is, aside from their authors, literally nobody.

The lost world of Australian culture: ‘The Victoria and Albert Museum is hosting an exhibition of Kylie Minogue’s costumes’ said Sandi Toksvig on a recent episode of BBC Radio 4’s News Quiz. ‘It’s on loan from the Australian Arts Centre, which is now presumably empty.’

The essays of Susan Sontag: To the academic reader, these are provocative, even flashy performances. To the common reader, they’re like shots of intellectual espresso. You want to tear through the Duino Elegies in time to make it to the Whitney, a fringe production of Aristophanes and a coffee-house poetry reading of a Latvian émigré.

The legacy of Tony Blair: Yet the record of his governments has been one of opportunities half-caught or missed entirely, of impulses that were sometimes admirable but rarely acted on, of reasonable but not unusual administrative competence, of some genuinely wrong-headed or shameful policies and, of course, a disastrous adventure abroad. Its overall record is incoherent, and becoming more so. His political leadership has also been paradoxical. He has given the Labour Party those unprecedented victories but done more to destroy it institutionally than anybody.

The cool of the Velvet Underground: What binds fans to the Velvet Underground – fans in private – is this closet character in a band that was supposed to be the epitome of cool: a fantasy of an underground world of S&M dungeons and shooting galleries that offers pleasures similar to those to be had from ‘underground’ books in the hip-Gothic tradition of Sade, Georges Bataille, William Burroughs, Hubert Selby Jr and whoever serves as a present-day inheritor (Chuck Palahniuk?). Reed rewrote these books, in essence, as songs.

The politics of zombies: That’s an irresolvable setup, but it gets to the heart of what makes our zombie friends such paradoxical creatures: metaphorically potent because they’re grounded in a mundane reality, spiritually provocative because they dispense completely with spirituality, symbols of class warfare that posit a classless society as the ultimate horror. The zombie embodies the greatest horror of death: the inescapable sameness of it.

The end of violence

Scoop covers the protests for and against repeal of S 59 here.

Good news for Architectural Historians

Sophie Ellis-Bextor's latest video was shot in Venice.

Linkorama

Here, without further ado is a brief round-up of some pages I have been reading; posted with thanks to Craig Young for sending news stories.

The Pope goes on about gay marriage again, while his forthcoming visit has stirred up the great Brazilian condom debate and Popetown continues to make itself unpopular, now in Lithuania. Elsewhere in Eastern Europe Satanic bar codes frighten the peasantry and here is some more about Poland. In Slovenia, people are disappearing; Mother Jones reports. Back in the USA Albert Mohler wants to have the gay gene removed before birth, which rather contradicts all that guff about homosexuality being a lifestyle choice. Meanwhile, rights are an issue for Melanie Phillips.

Enough of bad news. For your edification, amusement and time-wasting, here are a few other things I have been reading. If you like art, try Cabinet Magazine. If you like toast, try Dr Toast. If your redeemer has blessed you with broadband, here is Godtube; as a taste, see why atheists should be scared of bananas . If you are unsure of what GLBTQ2IA means, here is a politically correct lexicon. On the other hand, you might want to know how to be right. Here is some clever stuff by Harvest Bird and a new edition of Foucault's Madness and Civilisation gets roughed-up by the TLS.

Finally, CBTP has found Billy Bragg and Bill Bailey playing together.

Where were you last night?

I was here.

Rad.

And so on and so on and scooby dooby doo-bee

Just when I thought I would have a quiet day nursing the hangover that resulted inevitably from drinking with Craccum editors past and present, Craig Y has sent me this ominous report from Doug Ireland. It's crazy, but it's true: The World Congress of Families will be holding its fourth world congress in sunny Warsaw, a city famed for its concerto, its convention (International air travel, in case you care) and its appalling Stalinist architecture.

Who, what and why (you might ask) is the World Congress of Families? It is a confederation of wild and wacky fundamentalist groups who come together every few years to listen to 'papers' by pseudo-academics on the favourite fundy topics: girls and gays. Its members or delegates or representatives or whatever include:

The Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, International Campaign for the Family, Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, Family Caucus, Familias Y Sociedad (scorchio!), The Howard Center For Family, European Federation for the Family, Family First Foundation, Red Familia, World Family Policy Center, United Families International, Church of God – Family Ministries, Latin American Alliance for Families

You will by now have learned to be suspicious of any organisation with 'family' in its name, just as you learned to be suspicious of funny men offering you sweeties. You would be right. These people are dreadful and Warsaw is welcome to them.

But (you might ask) why Warsaw? Don't get me wrong: I have nothing against the place, having never been there. I know almost nothing about it, other than that the food in the Polish restaurant near the V&A was very good and what I learned from a Polish ambassador's daughter over dinner not so long ago. It just seems an unusual choice for a world conference destination. Like, I mean, have you seen A Short Film about Killing? The reason why the fundies are going there is on the website:

Europe is almost lost; to a demographic winter and to the secularists.  If Europe goes much of the world will go with it.  Almost alone, Poland has maintained strong faith and strong families, though even Poland comes under severe pressure to change.  Poland has saved Europe before. It is likely she will save Europe again.  On family and population questions, Europe is the battleground in the early years of the 21st Century, and Poland is the pivot point.   It makes abundant sense that The World Congress of Families IV meet among the brave people of Poland.  Poland’s central location will give pro-family groups across the Continent easy access to this Congress.

You see, Poland is now run by twins. One is President and the other Prime Minister. They are identical, so they could swap jobs without anyone knowing or one could have a night off while his brother does the round of diplomatic receptions. A convenient arrangement, you might think, but unfortunately Doug and Dinsdale Kaczynski are even nastier than the World Congress of Families. If you read Ireland's article rather than this one, you will see why.

I could go on but I won't. It's a nice day and I want to have happy thoughts now. So here is one organisation with family in the title that you can trust: Sly and the Family Stone.



If only the fundies would get the message.

A spy in the house of dull

I am informed that my former employers have placed a notice in the members' newsletter to say that the Fundy Post is not an official publication of the New Zealand Association of Rationalists and Humanists (Inc).

I am glad they cleared up any ambiguity. I don't know about you, but I think only a spectacularly dim member would think this blog an official NZARH publication, since I am consistently rude about the Association and its inactivites. However, if you were under this delusion, I am sorry to disappoint you. You can at least console yourself by reading some of the fascinating articles in the NZARH Journal.

Even better, you can go along tomorrow to the Open Forum on the National Statement on Religious Diversity. I am sure it will be a hoot. I would go but the NZARH filed a trespass order against me.

On the other hand, you could stick around here. I have nothing positive to say about Planetary Humanism but I do occasionally post really good cartoons, such as this one from Wondermark. It was sent to me by Samuel. ROFLMAO





postscript: this one is good as well.