4 posts tagged “human stupidity”

The following post by a professor at VT rebutting that pompous ass Dinesh D'Souza who is trying to gain religious mileage from an incredible human tragedy. I will eventually post more about my thoughts on the subject but frankly I don't think I can add anything useful to the discourse but I shall try. It reminds me that there are people out there who so crave attention they are willing to use any platform to achieve it. It's vile that he just had to chime in with basically useless commentary even before the first victims were laid to rest. Remember when tragic events happen people go into pattern seeking mode trying to find a reason and they will throw whatever they can out there to make sense of it all. At some stage we need to realize that many things happen without a reason and all we can do is move forward. It's painfully slow at first but eventually you get there. Just appreciate who you love for as long as you have them because without warning you may never really get to tell them how you feel. As for people like D'Souza I really do hope your god exists because when you meet him I think he'll take great pleasure at pointing at the No Vacancy sign. shalom.

I came across this post today and it utterly disgusts me. What this Church is doing is beyond criminal and they are allowed to get away with in the name of religion. They are fooling people into believing they have some kind of cure for hiv/aids. All it is them throwing water ummm errrr holy water and these poor folks and telling them they will be cured. They are callous enough to tell  the victims they must go off their drugs if they want to be helped. Some of the people are forced to go there by their families and are chained up. How is this even remotely a Christian thing to do?

The scary thing is there are going to be people who will believe they are cured that will go out and infect even more people. This will create even more victims and reinforce superstitions surrounding hiv/aids in Africa where all kinds of crack-pots have cures or deny it even exists. What I would love to see is them backing up their claims of curing people with real scientific tests. Let's see how long their claims last or excuses start cropping up like "it did work but now god is angry because you're questioning his great power to cure through dirty water".

I don't blame the infected people for wanting to believe in this. They need hope in a world where they are treated as lepers and ostracized.  It's such a shame that their church isn't giving them spiritual guidance but has decided that it is also a medical authority that it can cure through lies and deceit. One can only hope that the god of the old testament does exist and will rain some fire and brimstone on these jackasses.

I was at an Austrian Scholars Conference (ultra-libertarian school of economics) last week in Alabama. I'm not quite sure why the Mieses Institute is there but 4 of us decided to show up to see if there was anything interesting. Before we went there we were joking about how I would be the odd one out for obvious reasons. We were calling ourselves the rainbow coalition since I was the brown guy, one guy is a jew, another grew up in south africa during apartheid and the last guy is a canadian ;). It's funny how a joke can manifest into reality. I just have to say I did meet a few genuinely nice people in Auburn but I'm telling you this story because it highlights we have a long way to go as people.

On Friday night I went out with one of the guys from work to check out the local bars at the end of the night we were walking back to our hotel and this drunk sorority girl looks at me and my friend and starts blabbering stuff in heavy southern accent in spanish. The light bulb went off in my drunken head that she must actually think I'm mexican. I proceeded to mention to her that I wasn't mexican and how it was backward of her to just assume (not in those polite words). The next night we were out again and at a bar this college guy starts launching into me about being mexican and starts shoving me and calling me a pussy for not wanting to fight. I tried to explain to him that I wasn't mexican and what he was saying didn't make any sense. My co-worker tried to diffuse the situation but the guy started getting angry at him so we left. Do you spot a pattern here? Brown skin means mexican over there. I don't know why they think being mexican is a bad thing but we are dealing with simple people here so who knows what their little brains are trying to achieve.

I find the situation quite absurdly comical. This is a so-called college town where there is healthy population of idiots. Auburn is one of those towns where they care more about sport than academics. Somewhere in that process they've forgotten to teach their kids how to judge people on character not by how they look. They've obviously opted to take the easy route since it involves the amphibian brain to make judgments instead of higher thought faculties. I'd be fine with people coming to conclusion that I'm a fool by talking to me instead of just making a sweeping judgment about who I am and what I'm about. It's funny that I've lived in America for almost 8 years and this is the first time I've been racially abused. I have to give it to the fine folks of Auburn you're faith in creationism has prevented you from actually evolving as humans. I don't plan on coming back anytime soon and I can only hope your gene pool is diversified soon. To all the minorities that are stuck there come to California, it isn't perfect but it sure as hell better than that podunk  cretin filled town. If you are planning on going there and you're not white wear a label on your shirt to explain to the auburnians your background so when they decided to racially abuse you they get the race right.

i feel the dead

i feel the dead in the cold of violets
and the great vagueness in the moon.

the earth is doomed to be a ghost,
she who rocks all death in herself.

i know i sing at the edge of silence
i know i dance around suspension,
possess around dispossession.

i know i pass around the mute dead
and hold within myself my own death.

but i have lost my being in so many beings,
died my life so many times,
kissed my ghosts so many times,
known nothing of my acts so many times,
that death will be simply like going
from inside the house into the street.

- sophia de mello breyner

I was reading news.com.au and came across this piece about a 19 year old girl who faces 90 lashes after she was gang raped in Saudi Arabia. Her crime was seeing a guy in public which it seems is a a big no-no under the Sharia law or some other perversion of it that they have in Saudi Arabia. What is wrong with these people? The poor girl has been traumatized enough. You don't easily get over an event like that and continue to slap her in the face. Her brother beat her up because she brought shame to the family. What happened to the criminals? They got up to 5 years in prison. What kind of justice is that? I can understand a short jail term with forced castration but they are basically getting off. They've killed this girl emotionally and should have to pay for that.

Everyone should be writing to their local Saudi Embassy and protesting. Not that it will change anything but hopefully it will cause a major embarrassment for them. People like this don't understand compassion and humanity but they do understand losing face. There are lone voices in Saudi Arabia fighting this but it's hard to when every else is so complacent and accepting of the situation. For all their wealth they are still a backwards nation. They can try to pretend they are sophisticated but really when you're law is based something that hasn't changed in over a thousand years, you've got to wonder. Someone should get that girl a visa to come to a western country. People may complain about the west but for all our faults we're still an order of magnitude better than any Islamic state.

Allah the all-powerful , the all-merciful ? yeah right.