I got this in an email from a friend, and I wanted to post it here in hopes that discussion would result.  I think it presents some valid points, and I will follow it up with some of my own commentary in the form of notations.  But first I wish to preface by saying that having been through the public school university as well as highschool system, there is a great deal of anti-white or perhaps anti-western bias on some campuses.  It pervades the curriculum as well as the lectures and classroom discussions.  Those kind of places are also rife with anti-Christian propaganda as well as anti-Jewish sentiments.  For instance, the Race Relations class I took at GSU was based on 2 premises which were repeatedly stated as axioms while they were shakey at best, and one was completely unproven and unprovable.  The first being that race is a social construction, which is true to a certain degree but not completely so, and the second being that only “white people” can be racist.  Anyone with half a brain ought to realize that if the first premise is true then there is no way that the second can be true.  You cannot make a generalization about a group if there is no such group, but aside from that, it’s ludicrous, because racism involves either a sense of hatred for people of different backgrounds, and/or a sense of superiority based on one’s own background.  But anyways, since I have already discussed this previously I will now show the email without further delay:

 

 

1.  Even if he truly made racist comments, I don’t understand how such speech would merit a jucial response.  Free speech is a Constitutionally protected liberty.  Is there more to it than that?  Does anyone know what really happened?

2.  Personally, I don’t see the point in any kind of racial pride.  Or more generally, I see no reason to be proud or ashamed of something which cannot be helped.  Of course I respect people’s right to have whatever attitude they want, and I do not recognize anyone’s right to be protected from having their feelings hurt.  Boo-hoo.  Stop acting like a baby and grow up, if you can’t handle getting your feelings hurt then go dig a hole and hide in it from everyone, because there are plenty of ways you (anyone) can be made fun of, including both things which can and cannot be helped.  I do recognize that to a certain extent identification with groups or group identity is inevitable for people, but if someone wishes to say “I’m proud to be X” then they have no grounds for complaining when someone else says, “I’m proud to be Y.”  To attempt to deny someone else the same freedom of speech and expression which you enjoy is hypocrisy and opression.  Part of the problem is that even under the best of intentions and circumstances, invoking _______ pride sends the wrong (at the very least exclusionary) signals to people who do not belong to that group.  I once nearly joined a “Jewish Pride” blogring here on xanga, but then I decided against it because upon reflection I discovered that my unspoken attitude was something along the lines of “haha, look what I am and you’re not.”  I think that that is the pervasive attitude behind anyone that invokes such rhetoric, unless they do so merely to make an ideological point, which seems to be the case with Kramer here.

3.  That is stupid, but quite honestly I haven’t seen much of that rhetoric.  Of course I might be neglecting pop culture movements due to my scholarly pursuits, but mainly what I see on applications is like this: Caucasian (white non-hispanic): persons of European, Middle Eastern, or North African origin.  Asian/Pacific Islander: persons having their origins in east Asia, India, and the pacific rim. Black (non-hispanic). Hispanic: something having to do with the first language being Spanish (it varies)

Anyways, there is probably some pop culture significance that I am missing out on because I tend to ignore pop-culture.

4. There is definitely a double standard which is evident.  It seems to me that in the US white on black racism is generally regarded as being the most severe, and if other types of racism are recognized they seem to be put in lesser catagories, sometimes in descending order.  Sometimes they are referred to as “reverse discrimination.”  I have not seen a lot of sympathy for racism against Asians, and they seem to be ridiculed in popular entertainment at times.  However, I believe he overgeneralizes just a bit, although one must take into account that he is extremely frustrated and justifiably so.  First of all, how does he define “white”?  No one is literally white, except for Mr. Data, an understanding of parameters is required.  My race relations class that I was forced to pay for defined “white” roughly as mean racist people.  If it’s meant to invoke race then one has to restrict the term to Indo-Europeans, which includes most of Europe, exluding Hungary, but including Iran, the Berbers of NW Africa, and some of the people in Northern India.  Of course there is some mixing involved in those areas so it’s not full proof.  If it’s meant to be indicative of physical appearance then one has to add all Caucasoid people’s, including Jews, Arabs, Egyptians, and possibly a few others.  A lot of less educated people in the US are fairly subjective and consider people from Southern and Eastern Europe to be “not white” but then they believe Jews are white, even though Jewish people are an Asiatic group like the Gypsies.  Those sorts of people get on my nervs because they make no sense, and they make no sense because they lack objectivity.  At any rate, I think it is fallacious to invoke mentalities of “white vs. non-white.”  It is a gross overgeneralization to lump all non-white people together.  Perhaps it’s different up north where almost everyone is liberal, but down in Georgia I have seen lower class black and white people ridicule eachother (even though they are mixed with one another) which causes outrage, but when they ridicule and discriminate against Asians, Jews, Arabs (any Asiatic people’s), then people seldom care.  The point is, different racial groups exist in the forms of many cultures, and each culture has a different outlook on things, so it is impossible to make valid generalizations on such a gross scale.  A lot of the “white people” in Georgia just assume based on my physical appearance that I am one of them, and their expectations about my culture and behavior are based on those suppositions, but in reality, I am an outsider and I have less in common with them than the “black people” here do. 

5. A cogent and unrefutable point.

6. Agreed, I don’t see why there shouldn’t be a white history day.  It seems only fair that if there is a black history month there should also be a white history and an Asian history.  Or perhaps there should be none of any kind since any such thing is going to be exclusionary by default.  Then again, there is such a thing as freedom of speech.  Perhaps if we called it “Indo-European” awareness month it would be more palatable to all the self hating liberals.  Indo-European month could be used to remind people that it was Indo-Europeans who created the first secular human rights document, the light bulb, the latin alphabet, as well as the numeric symbols that most of the world uses.  I’m not advocating that Indo-Europeans are better than anyone else, I’m just stating facts.

7.  All of those items are definitely exclusionary and one sided.

8.  An undeniable truth, which seems to be attributable to self hating liberals, or perhaps fits in with being anti-western.  Anti-western propaganda seems to be in vogue right now amongst many scholars, I think mainly the “revisionist historians.”

9.  It seems that we have gone from general to specific without any kind of proper transitions.  But again, some allowances must be made due to his frustration.  The points are still sound even though the rhetoric is a bit flawed.

To sum it up, liberals around the world in various countries have conspired to have something they call an “Earth Hour” where the lights in 26 major cities will be turned off to increase “awareness” of global warming. 

“Switching the lights off for an hour is not going to make a dent in global emissions,” organiser Charles Stevens, of the environmental group WWF, told AFP.

“But what it does do is it is a great catalyst for much bigger changes. It engages people in the processes of becoming more energy efficient.”

Now, I am not a person that advocates the deliberate destruction of the environment, and it is possible to build practical utilitarian and scientific arguments against ecological destruction.  The most obvious being that for now at least, we still have to live on earth, and if we make it uninhabitable or inhospitable then life becomes more difficult.  However, when liberals are worried about the environment they are concerned about the environment for it’s own sake.  Meaning, they place the preservation of natural ecology and the life forms which it is composed of above human welfare.  A common theme among their rhetoric casts humanity as shortsighted enemies of the environment, and frequently calls for reductions in consumption and population.  They like to fuss about how much people in western countries consume or how Americans drive too many cars, while ignoring how China has deforested Tibet, or how much pollution comes from factories there, or how Egypt dumps raw sewage directly into the Mediteranean.  Of course if they do notice these things, then ALL of humanity is to blame for it, not the specific groups responsible, and sanctions against western nations are in order, and of course the ultimate solution to it all is a one world government.  Why they don’t realize that a one world government made up of ruling bodies from those countries, and self hating western countries would do anything to curtail the environmental abuses is beyond me.  They might suggest consolidating all the power into one man, but then we have the anti-Christ, or at best, Emperor Palpatine. 

But I digress…  The immediate concern here is that a great deal of energy is generated by the burning of fossil fuels, and the burn off from said fuels increases global warming.  I agree that excessive burning of fossil fuels is stupid, but that is because the fossil fuels are a finite resource.  The situation adds to the merits of switching to nuclear energy, which produces a lot more energy with a lot less pollutants and consumption of natural resources.  It would also be wise to eventually move towards generating power through fusion rather than fission.  I must confess, that I am not completely sold on the concept of “global warming.”  I do believe however, that if global warming is indeed occuring, that the governments and world organizations which the liberals are running to for solutions, are probably behind it and responsible for it.  After all…

Stevens said the initiative encouraged businesses to be more careful with their electricity use while at the same time sending “a fairly powerful message to governments that people are demanding action.”

…and…

“Governments and businesses are joining individuals, religious groups, schools and communities in this terrific movement that’s all about making a change for the better,” he said.

“It’s staggering to see so much support from across the globe in just our second year and we’re hoping that this will continue to grow year after year.”

…it would be a great way to make people more amenable to a one world government.  At the risk of sounding repetitive, governments seldom relinquish power, they prefer consolidation, and once a government has power it holds onto it.  The more a government does the less freedom people have, and when governments take action the action is well planned out in such a way that it will not result in an actual concession on the part of the government.  If a world government is formed then it means that the government can act more unilaterally than ANY government in history ever.  Hitler, Genghis Khan, and Ashurnasurpal would be like picking daisies compared with what a world government would do.

Anyways, the “Earth Day” is going to be on March 29, 2008 (tomorrow), and just to be belligerant, I intend to leave at least one light on during that whole 24 hour period and I encourage others to do so.

 

Source: http://green.yahoo.com/news/afp/20080328/wl_asia_afp/climatewarmingaustraliaearthhour.html

I have been hitting the matchmaking websites for a while now, and I kept coming across people that put “Spiritual but not religious” in the slot for religion.  When I was a kid I heard about people like that and came to associate them with drugs and the hippie movement.  At any rate, what on earth does it mean?  It’s completely ambiguous, and it really tells nothing about a person except that they might be an airhead or a pothead (or both).  In addition to the druggies and new agers, there are actually Christians who go around telling people that they are “spiritual not religious” because ___________(insert convoluted bogus explanation).  I find it difficult to believe that one can be spiritual and not religious.  Faith is a component of all religions, and spirituality a component of most.  But religions are also an organized set of beliefs, which include cosmology, origins, and beliefs about purpose (or lack thereof).  So if a person has faith and spirituality (which includes demon worship) without organization, then they could probably be without religion, assuming they have no beliefs about origins, cosmology, or purpose.  But then, might it not be more apt to describe them as superstitious?  I would say so, they ought to delete that catagory and replace it with “superstitious” and that would teach all those people a lesson.  My first assumption about people like that is that they are superstitious, or potheads, or both.  At any rate, self identifying along those lines makes a person look  foolish right away, and it is hard to take them seriously after that.

A few days back I saw an article talking about how Hitlery’s running mate (vice presidential candidate) “resigned” after stating that the only reason Obama was beating Hildabeast was because he’s black.  Of course the running mate (whose name escapes me at the moment) was probably forced to resign on the grounds that being associated with her after making the comment would harm the Clinton campaign.  Which may be true, but what the running mate said was also true, and quite obvious.  Of course I don’t like Hillary any more than I like Obama, but one has to ask, what has Obama done?  The answer that comes to mind is… nothing.  I find it humorous that both of them are writing books, and I have not glanced through them yet, but based on the stuff that Obama has said in his speeches I imagine that his, at least, are full of fluff.  Hitlery’s may very well also be full of fluff, but there could also very well be vitriol in hers in addition to the fluff because she strikes me as an angry bitter person.  I would imagine that she probably engages in more self aggrandizement than Obama, but still, I have yet to check the stuff out before I can say for sure.  At any rate, all the hype about Obama is his blackness, and concerning that, he’s not very black, and certainly not African American with his dad being from Kenya and he being raised outside the US (if I remember correctly).

At any rate, I have also come across this article: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080318/ap_on_el_pr/obama_race

Obama confronts racial division preached by his “pastor.”  The way I understand it, Obama’s supposed pastor preached a rather hate filled speech against “white people” and said something along the lines of the US deserving the 9/11 attack because of how black people are treated.  I’ve also heard that we deserved the 9/11 attack because of how we supposedly favor the Jews, and for some other things that I can’t remember.  At any rate Obama, or at least his campaign managers, feel that he has been compromised through association with this man, so they are trying to smooth things over.  To be honest, I don’t find this in any way surprising.  I know that a lot of black churches endorse the democrats from the pulpit (even though the Democrats do nothing that results in any actual concessions from the government), and still manage to retain their tax exempt status which sets up an ugly double standard.  And all kinds of churches do messed up things and have messed up pastors guilty of, just to name a few, child abuse, child molestation, affairs, racism, financial fraud, and preaching a wide range of theological heresies.  So racism is just one of them, some churches even play with snakes.  Of course, Obama could get out of this if he just came out and said, “Well guys, the truth is that I don’t really care about church, period, so it doesn’t matter to me what this guy says.  I just went there for a while to cultivate an image.”  That would be the truth, because a lot of Democrat politicians try to maintain associations with churches as a means of garnering additional votes from church going communities.  Democrat politicians have two strikes against them in regards to trying to associate themselves with church goers, much less with being Christian.  First of all, they are politicians, and politicians are generally liars and weasels, or many times puppet leaders.  Secondly, the Democrats are heavily steeped in liberalism, which in it’s modern application is generally an inversion of Biblical morality and truth.  So of course anyone who stops to think about it will realize how bogus it is for a Democrat to claim to be Christian or to care about church, but, most people don’t like to stop and think about anything, so they don’t.  At any rate, I elected to review and analyze those excerpts from his speeches which he issued in response to this “crisis”:

Forming a more perfect union “requires all Americans to realize that
your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams,” said the
Illinois senator running to be the first black president.

–In general, deliberate ambiguity falls safely within the realm of fluff.  What definition for “perfect union” are we using, and what dreams are we talking about?  How will the dreams be applied, and how will they be achieved?

“This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected,” he said.

–Fluff.  I call this a “nothing speech,” because it is a speech in which nothing is said. 

“The anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to
condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the
chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races,” he said in a
speech at the National Constitution Center, not far from where the
Declaration of Independence was adopted.

–A statement which still does not reveal his position on the issue.  Was the pastor right or wrong?  Does Obama agree with his statements or disagree?  It’s a matter of yes or no, but he gives an answer which clarifies his position about as much as saying, “The sky is really blue today, but sometimes it rains, and at night it gets dark.”  Well duh…

Obama said sermons delivered by his longtime pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, “rightly offend white and black alike.”

–Stating the obvious but saying nothing.

“I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community,” Obama
said, speaking in front of eight American flags. “I can no more disown
him than I can my white grandmother — a woman who helped raise me, a
woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as
much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once
confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and
who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes
that made me cringe.”

–Interesting anecdote, but also irrelevant.  Where is the statement of position?

“We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this
country,” Obama said. “But we do need to remind ourselves that so many
of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today
can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier
generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.”

–Now he’s almost saying something, but not quite.  Of course that is only because I do not believe that the Jim Crow is responsible for the higher ratio of black poverty today in contemporary America.  It might explain something in the south were it not for the fact that the south is also filled with poor white people.  I do get the impression, that he really has no opinion of his own on the issue.  After all, Obama is only half black, and he is quite wealthy, and somewhat foreign.  So at best if he has any sympathies towards the black or white communities in the US, it is going to be from a 3rd person perspective rather than direct experience.

“The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some
of Reverend Wright’s sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that
the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning,” he
said.

“If we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners,
we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health
care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American,”
Obama said, drawing a rare burst of applause in a somber address.

–And those issues are not within the purview of the government.  Those are social issues not legal issues.  I don’t want the government meddling in health care or education, so I don’t look to them to “solve” those problems.  All it would mean is more taxes, more bureaurocracy and less personal freedom.

I don’t know if anyone has ever heard of this before, but there is a Bible translation out there, which I believe to be relatively recent called the “Message Bible.”  It is called such because in theory the authors or “translators” take the meaning behind the words and put it into what I must say is a rather dumbed down version of contemporary English.  It could perhaps be termed “street” speech, which is a bit better than ebonics but not by much.  I have heard people read from the Message Bible on a variety of occasions, and each time I cringe internally because the text is so mutilated that nothing from it can be recognized.  For instance, I do not believe that anyone would recognize the following passages (or even that they are supposed to be Biblical passages for that matter):

Don’t pick on people, jump on their failures, criticize their faults— unless, of course, you want the same treatment. That critical spirit has a way of boomeranging. It’s easy to see a smudge on your neighbor’s face and be oblivious to the ugly sneer on your own. Do you have the nerve to say, ‘Let me wash your face for you,’ when your own face is distorted by contempt? It’s this whole traveling road-show mentality all over again, playing a holier-than-thou part instead of just living your part. Wipe that ugly sneer off your own face, and you might be fit to offer a washcloth to your neighbor.

Don’t be flip with the sacred. Banter and silliness give no honor to God. Don’t reduce holy mysteries to slogans. In trying to be relevant, you’re only being cute and inviting sacrilege.

How can anyone recognize that?  Actually that is the Message translation of Matthew 7:1-7.  I really only intended to look up Matthew 7:3-5 but the author for the Message elected to condense 1-5 into one slopped together paragraph.  Those verses should read as follows from the KJV:

1Judge not, that ye be not judged.

 2For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.

 3And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

 4Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?

 5Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.

 6Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.

–Matthew 7:1-6.

 

As anyone should be able to see, the passage in question has nothing to do with facial expressions or anyone’s face being dirty.  It has everything to do with vision being obstructed.  The claymation movie “Miracle Maker” does an excellent job depicting NT passages, and they illustrated this parable showing two carpenters while Jesus narrarated.  One was working the wood and got a splinter in his eye, while flailing about his friend walked in carrying a stack of logs, of which one was leaning up against his face.  He says, “here let me help you with that” without putting down his logs first, and then he falls over.  The point is that if there is something wrong in your life it obstructs your ability to see clearly.  Therein lies the danger of trying to find a hidden meaning behind the words when the meaning is apparent.  In fact in this case I would say that the meaning was totally lost.  And this is supposed to make the Bible more clear and easy to understand?  What on earth is a “travelling road show mentality”?  I think this twisted version creates more problems than it solves when it comes to eliminating ambiguity or making the Bible more relatable.

I would find it humorous were it not for the fact that there is a severe admonition in the Bible about adding to and removing from the text: “For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book:  And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.”–Revelation 22:18-19.  Translating the Bible from one language to another is one thing, but it is a serious thing to alter the wording in such a way that the meaning is also altered.  Especially if one is trying to infer a “meaning behind the words” because your inferred meaning may not be correct, after all, anything that you read must first pass through the filter of your own mind.  The end result could be totally bogus, and a product of your imagination and/or ego, or worse.  At any rate, much of the Bible is very strait forward, in which case it does not need paraphrasing.  In the cases where the Bible is cryptic anything less than a literal word for word translation is also dangerouse because if you do not understand then you certainly cannot paraphraze.  It’s true that there are some cultural differences between the ancient world and the modern one but that’s what history classes are for, or perhaps Sunday school, or… I don’t know… CONTEXT CLUES.  I maintain the position that the KJV is still the best English Bible version because it is a literal translation, not a paraphrase.  And a lot of The KJV is no more difficult to understand than Shakespear.  Perhaps Shakespear should also be put into street. 

 

Now finally, just as an experiment, I am going to take an important Bible passage, and without looking at the message Bible, I am going to translate it into ebonics.  Granted I am fairly white and suburban, but I believe I heard enough of ebonics to allow for me to produce a sufficient imitation.  Afterwards, I will then go back to Biblegateway.org and copy-paste the Message version of the same passage beneath it.  Now, I am going to try to preserve the meaning, and I will probably do better than the message version, but my ghetto translation IS NOT to be taken seriously as a legitimate Bible version or as cannon.  Unfortunately the names might be sufficient to tip people off as to the passage.  But without further adieu:

Ebonics Translation (care of JMSnooks):

And Jesus was like, “Yo dog, ain’t you in charge of this crib?  And you still don’t know nothin bout nothin?”

“Dog, it’s like this, fool, we talkin’ bout’ what we know an’ seen, and you gotto be a playa hater?”

“I try an’ tell you bout’ what’s goin’ down in the hood and it don’t jive, so how you gonna get what’s goin’ down in my daddy’s crib?”

“Ain’t nobody never been up there, ‘cept fo’ me, an’ I was there, fool.”

“An’ when Moses and the brothers wuz chillin, an he was like, ‘yo check out this snake my playa’s,’ that’s what’s gonna happen with me.”

“You got’s to believe my brotha, in me that is, or you is gonna burn in Hell.”

“Cuz G-dog likes the hood, yo, an’ that’s why he sent me.  That why you gotto believe, an then you get to chill foreve in G-dogs crib, my playa.”

I tried my best, and now let us see if the Message version is any more intelligent and coherent:

Jesus said, “You’re a respected teacher of Israel and you don’t know these basics? Listen carefully. I’m speaking sober truth to you. I speak only of what I know by experience; I give witness only to what I have seen with my own eyes. There is nothing secondhand here, no hearsay. Yet instead of facing the evidence and accepting it, you procrastinate with questions. If I tell you things that are plain as the hand before your face and you don’t believe me, what use is there in telling you of things you can’t see, the things of God?

“No one has ever gone up into the presence of God except the One who came down from that Presence, the Son of Man. In the same way that Moses lifted the serpent in the desert so people could have something to see and then believe, it is necessary for the Son of Man to be lifted up—and everyone who looks up to him, trusting and expectant, will gain a real life, eternal life.

“This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life.

I can’t tell which one is worse.  His grammar is a little more coherent but mine at least roughly follows the format of the verses, whereas his lumps together a variety of verses that are closely adjacent and makes them indistinguishable from one another.  At any rate, the passages being “translated” are John 3:10-16.

It should read:

10Jesus answered and said unto him, Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things?

 11Verily, verily, I say unto thee, We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen; and ye receive not our witness.

 12If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things?

 13And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven.

 14And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up:

 15That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.

 16For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

So I opened up the internet and found this article:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20080228/sc_space/venusmysteriesblamedoncolossalcollision

I read it and elected to critique it for a variety of reasons:

1. The article had serious flaws, which deserve to be called out.

2. The article shows how deeply engrained the ideology is, institutionally and socially.

3. The article brilliantly, though certainly involuntarily, shows how paradigms affect the reasoning process, for better or worse, as well as the interpretation of data.

So without further adieu…

Venus is made of the same stuff of Earth, but is bone-dry, hot enough to melt lead and has a chokingly thick atmosphere. It even spins backwards.

Granted.  It is also roughly similar to earth in size and perhaps density as well, which I believe forms the basis for comparison quite often.

Astronomers have spent decades trying to explain Venus’ mysterious properties.

A truly scientific analysis can only produce an understanding of how it works and what it is, not how it came to be.  Such things as origins are beyond the purview of science as science, by definition, can only deal with the observable, and must be strictly relegated to the realm of empirical data.

Now one scientist thinks the planet’s formation may explain all: Two huge, protoplanetary bodies collided head-on and merged to form our planetary neighbor, but obliterated nearly all water in the process.

This is absurd, first of all, there is no reason to assume that Venus ever had more water than it does today.  Why should it?  There is no empirical data or even circumstancial evidence that Venus ever had water.  On Mars it is reasonable to assume that it was probably once a wet world, since it still has a great deal of water in the ice caps, it’s surface possesses generous quantities of iron oxide, and there are large canyons which appear to have been produced by erosion, as well as geographic features which seem to resemble a dried up shoreline.  Of course it is possible that Mars was always that way, but usually erosion is produced by free flowing liquids.  We find no evidence of any such thing on Venus.  Furthermore, there is no evidence which would indicate that Venus sustained a large collision of any kind.  Venus is a terrestrial planet, if it was struck by another object of similar size there would be evidence.  Assuming that, against all odds, Venus was not obliterated, it would certainly not be round, and at the very least there should at least be a massive crater, such as we find on Mimas (moon of Saturn).  As it is, there are no large impact craters on Venus, the craters which it does have are volcanic in nature.  The evolutionists feel they have to insist on theories like this (which are unproven and unprovable), because they wish to rectify their ‘big bang’ theory with the law of the conservation of angular momentum rather than abandon their pantheistic notions about the universe being self creating.  Of course, even such a theory, were it plausible, would still be problematic because such a collision would probably depend upon bodies orbiting the sun in different directions.

“The probability that two protoplanets collided to form Venus is not at all implausible,” said John Huw Davies, a geodynamicist at Cardiff University in the U.K. who developed the idea.

A majority of scientists think Earth’s moon formed when a protoplanet about the size of Mars smacked into the planet at an angle. Davies thinks Venus was born of a far worse cosmic train wreck.

“What if the moon-Earth collision isn’t that big in planetary terms?” Davies told SPACE.com. “A head-on blow between two similarly sized bodies would have been about twice as energetic.”

None of which makes it any more plausible, in fact, being “twice as energetic” means that it would be twice as destructive.  The planets would be shattered, there is no way around that one.  It amazes me the things that some people are willing to believe in.

Astronomers have had little time to react to Davies’ proposition, which is detailed in recent issue of the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters, but already some are wary. Despite the cautionary responses from other scientists, Davies thinks his idea is worth exploring.

And of course there really is no way to explore it unless someone invents a time machine, and I really hope they do, because that way they can go back in time and see how wrong they are first hand.

Earth harbors an enormous volume of water, even in its searing interior. The life-giving molecule emerges as a vapor with molten lava, carrying with it a radioactive gas known as argon-40. The isotope is generated from radioactive potassium deposits inside of our planet, as well as in Venus.

Davies thinks the relatively low amount of such argon detected in Venus’ atmosphere — about 400 times scarcer than on Earth — is a sign that water never really seeped out of the parched, volcano-covered planet.

Fair enough, as far as the conclusion that water never really seeped out onto the surface of Venus goes.  It sounds plausible and reasonable.  But why does Venus have to be like Earth?  Clearly Venus is not like Earth, and I see no reason to make it so, or to believe that it was in the past.  This is a case of believing what one wants to believe rather than drawing logical conclusions based on evidence.

A mega-collision between two bodies of roughly equal size could have provided the energy necessary to rip water, which is made of two hydrogen and one oxygen, into pieces. The hydrogen would escape into space while oxygen would bond with iron and sink to the planet’s core.

I don’t understand why he feels a need to explain away the absence of water on Venus.  It seems that complex stories are being generated to support other complex stories.  As to the presence of oxygen, it may be that it is impossible for oxygen to exist in large free quantities on dead worlds.  Isaac Asimov seemed to believe that oxygen, in the absence of organisms, would quickly bond with other elements, such as Carbon, or Iron, or whatever.  He might be right about that because so far we only find large quantities of free atmospheric oxygen on Earth, which is so far the only planet that we know of which has life.  Oxygen does have a strong tendency to bond with other elements, so it’s existence in an unbonded state may be dependant upon organisms that break down CO2.

Another clue that Davies said gives his theory legs is the odd rotation of Venus. The planet rotates in a clockwise or retrograde direction, which is the opposite spin of every planet in the solar system. “Another peculiarity is that it has no moon,” Davies said. “If the head-on impact I’ve hypothesized was a little off of the mark, it could explain Venus’ retrograde rotation without making a moon.”

So at this point they are saying that Venus has no moon because something struck it, and Earth does have a moon because something struck it.  So the same action explains both situations.  Of course if the object that strikes the planet is large enough there will be no moon, but if it’s small enough then enough of the planet will be knocked off so that it can coalesce together in space, in spite of Boyles gas law, and become a moon.  Ridiculous.  It reminds me of my early childhood when I tried to socialize and play with normal kids.  Of course I always told the truth, because I thought I would go to Hell if I lied (still feel that way), but the other kids had no such compunction.  So I would get lied to all the time, and I found that when I interrogated the other kids they would invariably produce additional lies to support the initial lies.  Like this one time, I kid told me he could jump over my house, and my brother and I asked him to prove it.  So to prove it he tells us to wait out in the front yard and not move, and he runs around to one side of the house and comes out a little later on the other side.  We thought that even given the distance required to jump the house, a single leap still ought to be a swift manouver, so he produced some bogus explanation, and then another.  We told him to do it again and this time we each ran to opposite sides of the house and sure enough caught him in the backyard trying to run fast.  And of course another bogus explanation followed, which we also didn’t believe.  The point is, lies frequently break down under scrutiny, and one imaginary scenario does nothing to prove that another imaginary scenario is correct.

Aside from planning to create a detailed computer model for the hypothesized mega-collision, as has been done for moon formation theory, Davies said another way to test his idea is to send a new spacecraft to Venus.

As if a computer animation can ever be a viable substitute for actual observation or the gathering of real data.  “Well we didn’t see it happen, and we can’t watch it happen, which means we have no evidence.  So instead we are going to make up an illustration and pretend that it actually happened.”

“They made remote chemical measurements of the surface,” Davies said, but none indicated hydrated rocks. “If a new spacecraft finds a lot of hydrated minerals, it would show there is still abundant water on Venus. Then my hypothesis would be out.”

The hypothesis is out anyways regardless of whether or not water is found.  There is no reason to assume that there is abundant water on Venus, and all the empirical data gathered so far indicates that there is not.  The absence of water by no means proves his theory any more than a 15 year old kid can claim that prayer works because he prayed that the sun would come up the next day, and it did.  If he could find any evidence to indicate that Venus had more water in the past then he could at least say that Venus had more water in the past, however, that would still not prove his theory since it does nothing as far as proving that two planets of equal size can survive an “energetic” collision, or that such a thing happened in the case of Venus.

Even if hydrated rocks on Venus’ surface could rule out a cataclysmic formation, other data could provide better clues to the planet’s origins, Francis Nimmo of the University of California Santa Cruz thinks.

There is no way to empircally prove or verify the origin of any planet.  Maybe I created Venus, there, disprove that.

At any rate, I think it’s unfortunate that some investigations of other planets and extra-terrestrial phenomena are done for the purpose of lending credence for origin beliefs which are impossible to verify without a time machine, and in fact contradict natural physical laws.  Space exploration ought to be done for the purpose of understanding how things work, and how we can use those things to our advantage.  I think Venus is probably pretty useless as it’s only a matter of hours before probes melt, but if it must be investigated, then scientists ought to work on finding a way to siphon off that excess heat, then they ought to work on a way to start converting the atmosphere into a reducing atmosphere.  It could be done by the introduction of hardy genetically engineered plants and micro-organisms, assuming that there could ever be a way to siphon off the heat.

Source: http://movies.yahoo.com/mv/news/ap/20080220/120352248000.html

So the dictatorial communist government currently opressing China is upset by the fact that Steven Spieldork decided to withdraw his support from the Beijing olympics on the grounds that China has not leaned on the dictatorship in Sudan to cease hostilities in Darfur.  The reason that he is upset with the Chinese government is that China is a major client of Sudan and purchases a 2/3 of the oil produced in Sudan.  In theory the dictatorship in China ought to be able to lean on the Dictatorship in Sudan, since they have a close partnership from which Sudan benifits greatly, but of course that’s never going to happen so long as the dictatorship in Sudan believes that there is oil to be found in Darfur.  And if there is oil there why should the Chinese dictatorship want to stop them?  These are brutal and dictatorial regimes, they don’t care if a whole ethnicity, religion, or people group gets wiped out, in fact they would probably view it as convient more often than not. 

So perhaps being upset over Sudan is justifiable, but what about all the evil that goes on in China?  Here is the part I don’t get, China has one of the highest if not the highest level of human rights violations per year.  China relies heavily on forced labor, China has no freedom of speech or religion.  In China cameras watch everything and people can even get arrested for kissing in public.  I cannot think of any country more opressive than China except for perhaps Iran.  The fact that the olympics are being held in China is reason enough to protest.  The Chinese government is guilty of far more evil than the Sudanese dictatorship.  Of course when it comes down to it, liberals feel outrage if supposed Moslems are supposedly being opressed, but they could not care less about all the Christians that are getting raped, tortured, and killed in China.  I guess the logic is that they must deserve it for being Christians.  It was a mistake to ever initiate business dealings with China while the communist regime was in power.  Our money is what has kept them afloat all these years.  I place a lot of the blame on Nixon (may his name be forgotten).  If we had never established economic ties with China the communist regime would probably have floundered there as it did in Russia.  Why the olympics are being held there baffles me, and why no one seems to see that fact as sufficient grounds for indignation and protest baffles me further.  As it is, I will NOT be watching the olympics this time around.  Of course I didn’t watch them last time either. 

            So my youngest sister (11 years old) was talking about how some of the kids at school in her grade spend money in a really extravagant fashion.  She then goes on to say that some boy in her grade bought his “girlfriend” a real sapphire ring.  Right away there are two rather blatant sticking problems with this scenario: (1) where does a 5^th grade kid get the money for something like that when the legal working age for most states is 16 or at the very least 15?  (2) where do 11 year old children, clearly pre-pubescents, get off thinking that they have a boyfriend or girlfriend?

           

            Concerning the first issue, I put the question to my sister, “How can an 11 year old kid afford to buy such a thing when he is beneath the legal working age?”  So she tells me that his parents give him $20 a week for nothing, and that in fact many of the children at her school receive extravagant allowances in exchange for doing nothing.  I cannot overemphasize the stupidity involved in giving large sums of money to a child in exchange for nothing.  First of all, this does not teach children the value of money.  In truth, my parents experimented with giving my brother and I about $1 or $2 per week, in exchange for nothing.  Whenever we got that money we went down to a store called “Crafts Etc.” and spent it all on candy.  Why?  Because we did not have to work for it.  In order to appreciate the value of money one has to work for it.  Once I started working for my money I very seldom spent it.  Now I typically feel a sensation of guilt if I spend more than 2% of my monthly income on self indulgence.  The point is that the harder one has to work for their money the less likely they are to spend it on things which they do not need.  Conversely, the less one has to work for money the more likely they are to blow it, after all, it is not as though the feeling of loss can exist in situations where money was not earned, since they have sacrificed nothing to acquire the money in the first place.  An even more sinister effect of giving children money in exchange for nothing is that many of them come to expect the money, and see themselves as being entitled to income simply because they exist.  As adults these types of children will not function so well in society unless they first have a painful epiphany.  Otherwise, they will continue to expect money from their parents, or perhaps from society (which translates to handouts from the government).  The fact that one kid would spend a large portion of his undeserved handout(s) to buy an expensive item like a sapphire ring for another kid totally substantiates the point I made about how good stewardship can only be learned through hard work. 

 

            In all seriousness, the parenting style (or complete lack thereof) of many if not most parents these days is lamentable.  When I hear about stories like this I don’t know whether I should be angry or saddened by the stupidity.  I am certainly not surprised by it.  I think that far too many parents prefer to buy off their children by offering them money in exchange for peace.  They would rather delegate the responsibility of raising their children to society in general and come home to watch whatever stupid shows they watch in peace (that’s my theory anyways, chances are that whatever they do for diversion does not require a lot of intellect or creativity).  They seem to think that their social interactions with peers at school will be an adequate substitute from teaching them responsibility and propriety, or perhaps the evolution teaching is an adequate substitute for traditional religions and morality.  Or perhaps the issue is that they merely do not think at all.  I believe that the latter is more likely.

 

            At any rate, I would like to address the second issue.  What is wrong with kids these days that they feel they need to imitate adults to such an extent that they attempt to engage in romantic relationships before they are even capable or reproduction?  An 11 year old child is not equipped to engage in a true romantic relationship any more than he or she is capable of driving a car or managing a corporation.  Adults do all sorts of other things that children may mimic and imitate in play, but are not truly capable of understanding or participating in.  For instance, an 11 year old child could not program a computer, teach a class, bench press 150 lbs (which isn’t much BTW), drive a garbage truck, have children, or operate a chainsaw.  Actually I’m not entirely certain about that last one but I don’t wish to find out experientially.  The point is, there are plenty of things which grownups do that young children can only pantomime at best.  The human brain does not even stop growing until one turns 25.  So how anyone thinks that a child can be involved in a romantic relationship blows my mind, and the sort of parent that would facilitate that delusion both frightens and disturbs me.  When I was 11 such things were almost completely unheard of.  The boys would play with their cars or toy guns, or played at sports and wrestling.  Coed activities might include hide and seek or capture the flag, or something generally benign.  Back then girls were strange and mysterious creatures that played with Barbie dolls or engaged in imaginary fantasies known as “playing house.”  I believe that said fantasy was a ritual that involved mimicking the more mundane and consistent aspects of the every day lives of their parents.  I never found the activity particularly interesting or imaginative therefore I refused to engage in it as a general rule.  The point is, back then we had no concept of romance and little or no concept of sexuality (until puberty set in), and nothing could have been further from our minds.  And indeed, most children back then were unconcerned with such things, as they were considered to be beyond the realm of their experience (which is as it should be).  As a child, my cognitive abilities were considerably advanced in comparison with normal children, romance and courtship were something which I viewed as belonging to the realm of adults, or at the very least teenagers.  When I was 11 I spent a lot of my time reading, drawing, and writing (as I do now), playing computer games, indulging in imaginary scenarios with my friends, and engaging in theological debates with my Mormon friend.

           

I think the problem is that modern society places far too much emphasis on sexuality, so much so that self worth and social status are largely derived from it.  Something that ought to be private has been made very public, and the attempts to attach additional meaning to it are continuous.  My theory is that children cannot help but to notice this, and their childlike minds form the conclusion that sexuality is the pinnacle of adultness.  They therefore wish to emulate the activity in order to elevate themselves.  And of course most parents are too stupid to be aware of this or to stop it even if they are aware.   

It never fails to dissapoint me, when during a class discussion (still in college unfortunately, going for a 2nd degree), someone says something incredibly stupid and everyone else agrees with them based on entirely on sentiment, and completely ignores a thoroughy cogent counterpoint just because they don’t like it.  Emotions certainly have their uses and their place, but not if they don’t allow you to see both sides of an argument, of if you allow them to immunize you to reason all together.  So the class discussion was about an incident that happened in the colony of Virginia during the 1600′s, where the chief of a group of Native Americans (in this case Powhatan) died and was replaced by a successor who wanted to get rid of the English.  To that end he cooperated fully with the English, giving them everything they wanted and having his people ingratiate themselves to the English.  On a specific day, the natives who were among the English killed their hosts by using whatever weapons the colonists had on hand, killing indescriminately the women and the children as well.  All in all about 500 English colonists were killed, and the bodies were mutilated and estates burned.  Of course this provoked a reprisal from the English which went ill with the Powhatan who were forced to make even greater concessions in the end.  I can’t remember much about what the first few students said, probably because they didn’t say much, but this ragged extreme leftist femanist woman just decided to go off on a loud emotional tirade about how the English deserved exactly what happened to them.  Since the discussions seemed to be rather one sided and unilaterally anti-English, or perhaps anti-European or anti-white (a common flaw in public schools), I decided to offer some balance and perspective.

Over the period of my life my perspective on Native Americans (and many other things as well), has undergone many changes.  As a very young child I first found them both interesting and disturbing, but then I came to find them exclusively disturbing believing that they were completely savage and to have scalped women and children after raping them.  This was of course before I learned that the English actually introduced the custom of scalping.  At any rate, I was glad that they were tamed and no longer a threat.  Of course as I grew older I learned more and I realized that they were mainly fighting to keep their land, even though some of the methods were unpleasant and objectionable, and I became aware of the many broken treaties and agression of the English and then later the US government.  I chose to take a more neutral perspective on the issue.  I do not approve of stealing land, period, nor do I care much for the methodology that either side used, however, what is done is done, and there is no undoing the past.  However, I believe that what ought to be done is that land should be cordioned off in proportion to their numbers, and the larger groups of the remaining indigenous populations ought to be give their own countries and cut off from US hegemony and allowed to form their own independany governments.  And they ought to be given some good land not just those lousy deserts in the west where the only thing that grows are the sand dunes.  Of course once this is done they will no longer be the recipients of Federal aid, but freedom is more important than being breast-fed indefinitely.  That is my position and if anyone wants to argue with me then by all means do so.

But I digress, the point is that I wanted to offer some perspective.  I saw the way the discussion was going and was highly dissapointed, yet not surprised, that a major significant point was being glossed over in order that the English, or perhaps Europeans in general might be condemned.  So I said, “Regardless of what we might think of the methodology used by the English settlers if they had not done what they did (in reference to land grabbing) then none of us would be here.”  Which is true, because in that event there would be no US.  To which this individual next to me says in a thick redneck accent, “Unless you’re half Indian like me.”  And there were some other noises of agreement (with Bubba) and condemnation towards my unimpeachable logic.  So I did not recieve the opportunity to explain it them, but my first thought was, “how stupid.”  Of course Bubba would not exist under the proposed scenario because being half “Indian” (which is in fact a misnomer as Native Americans look nothing like Indians) as he is presently, would mean that under the proposed conditions his parents would never have met, and he would never have existed.  I never cease to be astounded by the lack of basic reasoning skills which many people seem to suffer from.  What I don’t get is how these sorts of people can survive in college, or highschool, or better yet, at what point did high school or college fail them?  This is exactly why it is dangerous to let anyone and everyone participate in running a society.  For people who can’t think or reason it’s better if they just do what they’re told, because an intelligent person can run things better than a foolish one.

At any rate, it is a matter of simple logic.  We, meaning everyone who is alive today, are as much a product of the past as we are products of our parents.  If anything in the past had happened differently, then events would be changed, and your parents may have never met, or if so the probability that they would have concieved at the exact moment when you were concieved would be negligable at best, and that is of course assuming that only minor changes would occur to the timeline.  If the English had been content to remain on the coasts of the new world, or perhaps not venture there at all, then hundreds of years of immigration, relocation, and international political interactions would never have occured.  Ancestors would have never met one another, and different people would have been born in their places.  It’s really just a matter of simple logic and how it can escape anyone totally mystifies me.  In fact, not only would I not exist, but no descendants of my ancestors would probably not exist.  Assuming that the timeline was not so altered as to prevent the birth of Adolf Hitler (which it probably would be although Hitler was very much the product of larger trends that had been brewing for hundreds or perhaps thousands of years), my ancestors would have had no place to flee to, and would have certainly been wiped out.  Of course the loss of the Jewish people and culture would be far more tragic than the loss of the indigenous North American cultures, which had no science or literature.  The value of Jewish civilization to the whole world is incalculable.  For certain there would be no Albert Einstien, or for that matter there would also be no Isaac Asimov.  The point is, the world would certainly be a different place, and maybe not a better one.  The lesson to be learned from what happened in North America is not to wish that it had never happened, but to make sure that it is not repeated elsewhere.  All of the rhetoric and recriminations seem to be geared towards engendering race hatred. 

As a final note, even if the English had not dispossessed the Native Americans it is illogical to conclude that they would have remained free.  Speaking strictly of the North American natives (the Mexican people groups were highly civilized and learned, as were the Andean groups of South America), they were developmentally arrested cultures which had probably lived in the same fashion for thousands of years.  If the English had not so aggressively colonized, then Mexico (post columbian) would quite simply be a lot larger.  In fact, much of what would later become the western portion of the US belonged first to Spain, and then to Mexico.  If there had been no US to take it away, it would still belong to Mexico.  Another possibility is that the Russians may have taken it, as Russia was quite expansive and had for a time owned and colonized Alaska.  There may have been nothing to stop them from taking more of the Americas.  Of course supposing that no white people of any kind ever came to the US, then someone else would have.  China may have had another Zhang He (spelling?), but in the meantime Japan was very expansive.  Before Japan became a major colonial power, it had already dealt with it’s indigenous people (the Ainu) in a way similar to which the US dealt with the Native Americans.  Japan needed resources and it knew it, especially after it industrialized.  Japan would have colonized the New World, and mowed over the natives just as they did with the Ainu, but with greater ease because the Ainu at least had metal working skills, and the Japanese at that time did not yet have guns.

So I went into Barnes & Noble to kill some time today while I waited on something else.  And I was actually looking for a book of sayings about Chuck Norris, like “When Chuck Norris does pushups he actually pushes the world down,” etc. but it wasn’t there.  Instead I found this book, “The Man Translator: Your Essential Guide to Manland,” by Alison Grambs.  I thought that given my difficulties with women a book that taught women how to understand or get along with men might be useful, but only if it actually provided accurate information.  So I picked it up to see if it was valid, and it was terrible.  The writing style was heavily convoluted, laden with emotional allusions, and flippant.  It was very difficult to read it because the points were esconched in long pratings about mindless drivel. 

Anyways, one of the first things she said, which was actually a few pages in from the front cover, was that men are simple minded and not interested in your (the woman) past, so leave all of the emotional baggage behind.  Yes definitely leave all of the emotional baggage behind.  Everyone has sad, unfortunate, and irritating things in their past, but you can’t do anything about it so there’s no point in pointless recriminations.  It’s so annoying to be with someone who is perpetually depressed, life is not that bad, and if it is then do something about it to make it better.  But if you (the woman) are so myopic and narrow minded that you can’t see a way around being depressed then go hang out with some emo losers who enjoy whining about how much they hate life and how depressing everything is.  I mean seriously, it’s no fun hanging out with a sourpus who is depressed all the time, and on top of that it also sends a signal to the man that he isn’t good enough to make your life better.  At that point, you are not worth being with, as a woman, you become nothing more than baggage.  That part of the point was a valid point, but the part about men being simple minded was rather negative, unnecessary, and untrue.  It’s poor rhetoric, and it shows that the author has a contemptuous attitude towards men, which really makes anything she has to say biased and suspect at best.  It could be said that the AVERAGE man is unsophisticated or simple minded, assuming the average guy just works, comes home, watches sports and eats Doritos (or whatever), and drinks beer.  But then, the average woman is not too smart either, just running around shopping for clothes, talking nonesense with her friends, and sitting on the couch watching soaps and reality TV while eating bon bons (or whatever).  The point is, filling your mind up with useless data or having a long list of things that elicits an emotional response does not make one sophisticated or pensive.  It means that you have a weak and convoluted mind, which is basically full of garbage or useless fluff.  For thousands of years the belief that women were simple minded and intellectually dimunitive was considered to be beyond questioning.  Women were also considered to be uncreative and unthinking.  The only hard evidence that fueled the assumption was that women were more emotional by nature and their concerns were more in line with raising children and keeping the house running, and having certain emotional needs or desires fulfilled.  Of course women were also typically denied access to education, and without an education people will tend to be more ignorant and less sophisticated.  But I digress, the point is that such attitudes and language are unhelpful as well as untrue.  I happen to be very sophisticated, and also very male.  Now as to the part about being uninterested in a womans past… I would argue that the statement is not generally true.  Common sense dictates that there are certain things which need to be known about a woman’s past, like whether or not they have STD’s, whether or not they are married, or have kids, how the woman was raised, what sorts of behaviors were modeled for her, etc.  That is of course only the beginning.  What we don’t need to know, is what sort of shoes the woman went shopping for with her friends when she was in high school, what sort of clothes she wore in high school, who was going out with who back in the day, what sort of noises you made as a baby, etc.  I consider that stuff to be fluff, and it’s hard to sit there and listen to someone prattle on about such irrelevant things.  Who cares?  I don’t.  I would much rather hear about a foriegn country that the woman visited, or the history of her philosophical musings and paradigms (if she doesn’t have any then that’s a problem, I don’t dig empty headed women), including paradigm shifts, or at the very least anything that goes beyond the scope of every day life or utilitarian concerns.  Discussions about utilitarian concerns need to be short and to the point. 

Then she had two “theories” about the origin of men, the creation theory and the evolution theory.  Of course both were heavily laden with flippant wording and pointless embellishments, but in her “creation theory” I was uncertain as to which creation theory it was supposed to be based on.  It bore some similarities to the Biblical creation account, but she said that man was created on day 7, and the Bible clearly teaches that the whole universe and everything in it were created in 6 days.  So…  more ignorance or perhaps stupidity that undercuts whatever points she might try to make.

I really didn’t read the whole thing but I read the beginning and skimmed…  She had another scenario where she told women not to use the rear view mirror for putting on makeup because it’s for looking at what is behind the car and if it’s moved the man won’t be able to use it for that purpose.  Well duh…  Does that really have to be said?  If so then that little factoid makes me sad.  She goes on to warn women not to leave lipstick in the glove compartment because it could melt all over his “stupid” stuff that he never uses but is in there nevertheless.  Stupid stuff… like my tire gauge, my owners manual, and my insurance policy?  More unnecessary condescension, but again, what kind of people have to be told these blatant obvious things?  Of course someone is going to be upset if something nasty melts allover their stuff.  It doesn’t matter whether it is useless or not, the point is something was destroyed and now there is a mess.  As for me personally, I prefer if my female counterpart (whoever that may be) does not wear lipstick.  First of all it’s pointless, and second, I don’t want it getting all over me.  In high school I may have wanted that because it would have shown everyone that I had a girlfriend, but as an adult it’s just irritating and messy.

So to sum it up, I think the book is stupid and worthless, and I think the author is a fruity and flighty person.  It didn’t help that she put up a list of things or options to resort to when men become too irritating.  A list which included a “meditation mat” for reciting mantras or yoga or some other such rot, and the option of becoming a lesbian.