Weird Stuff

I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm getting tired of hearing about Michael Jackson.  Yes, I know he was the supposed "King of Pop", but does that really mean we should devote endless hours of prime time television and news shows to his passing?  When did entertainment become the lead news item in this country?  Yes, I know, the news media sold their souls many years ago to the god of profits, so of course they feed our countries sick desire to hear any piece of juicy gossip possible about celebrities.  That's why we don't call them journalists any more, their just "the media".

I, along with everyone else, was shocked to hear of his death, but I got over it in about 5 minutes.  I was never much of a fan and I never bought any of his albums or saw him in concert, so to me, he was just another entertainer that became warped by his own success into an eccentric and bizarre caricature.  Worthy of a mention in the news of his passing.  But instead, the day he died, NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams spent 20 of their 22 minutes discussing the death of Michael Jackson, part of which was to let us know there would be a full 2 hour prime time show later that night covering every speculative detail of the events of the day, plus endless coverage the next day on the morning programs.  This in the middle of the crisis in Iran and other major news that got completely ignored.

The only news program that night that didn't devote the bulk of their time to Michael Jackson was The News Hour with Jim Lehrer on PBS.  Granted, they probably taped their show before the news of his death.  They only stated that he had been rushed to the hospital as part of their opening news summary.  Then they moved on to discuss a supreme court decision handed down earlier that day.  But even if he had passed at the time, I don't think their program would have been much different.

Beyond the news, there were endless shows spending countless hours picking over the still warm corpse of MJ as they clamored to feed the masses with any bit of information no matter how pointless or unfounded.  Then it was on to rumors about the drugs MJ was possibly on and where he would have gotten them.  Then onto the disposition of his children and the upcoming fight over his estate or lack of one depending on what time of day you tuned in.

Next it was the upcoming burial at neverland ranch and the plans to open it up as some sort of amusement park for his undying fans to come and pay their respects while the family reaped the profits.  Of course, later the family denied any such plans.  I'm sure the media had it right all along...don't you?

Now it's about the spectacle of his funeral including live coverage of the event with tickets being raffled off and then ultimately auctioned off for thousands of dollars.

For the sake of all of us, please just let it end.  Bury him already....better yet, just cremate him and spread his ashes over Diana Ross and Elizabeth Taylor and be done with it.

I guess my point is there are so many pressing issues going on right now, health care reform, climate change legislation, etc, that the media does not cover well.  Just imagine what we could do if the media spent as much time on these topics as they have on Michael Jackson.  Think of the educated discussions we could have on these problems to help craft appropriate solutions.  The problem is, that requires work on their part to investigate the issues and to read and understand what the proposed legislation says.  That's just too much work for them.

Instead we get our biased information from the talking heads on the 24 hour "news" channels who claim to be journalists but are no better than the talk radio idiots spinning their agenda out for the masses to consume.  The bottom line is our media is ill-serving the public and until that changes or people take the initiative to educate themselves, we'll continue to get bad legislation passed that will benefit the few.

The pendulum has swung far to the side of ignorance, the question is will it ever be able to swing back.

...go with overwhelming numbers.  That's the jist of this article about a group of evangelical christians calling themselves the Quiverfull movement who shun birth control in order to have large numbers of children to spread their faith.  If this isn't the scariest thing you've read all day, it must still be early where you are.  Here's a sampling.

"The womb is such a powerful weapon; it's a weapon against the enemy," Campbell says.

"They speak about, 'If everyone starts having eight children or 12 children, imagine in three generations what we'll be able to do,' " Joyce says. " 'We'll be able to take over both halls of Congress, we'll be able to reclaim sinful cities like San Francisco for the faithful, and we'll be able to wage very effective massive boycotts against companies that are going against God's will.' "

Heaven forbid.

I don't know why the news media continues to report on this stuff, but for some reason they do.  It's another report of someone thinking they see Jesus in something.  This time it's on the back of a moth and of course it's from Texas.  Now, I have a few questions about this, like, how do they even know what Jesus looked like? and why would he present himself on a moth or as he's done in the past on pieces of toast, or in tree bark or in a piece of glass?

What I want to see is a news story that says Image of Jesus seen in pile of poo dropped by sacred Hindu cow on stairs of Mosque in Israel.  Now that would be news.

There's actually a term for this kind of thing, it's known as pareidolia.  Basically, it's our brains trying to interpret random shapes/markings into something that has meaning.  It's the same as seeing images in clouds.  Phil Plait over at BadAstronomy.com has a whole category devoted to pareidolia and he does a pretty good job showing the idiocy of these things.

This goes under the "duh" file, but when I saw this headline I thought I was on The Onion site and not msnbc.com.  Are you ready for it? Ok, here you go.

'Just terrible,' killer says of execution ruling

In case you don't know, the supreme court ruled today that execution by lethal injection does not inflict undue pain and suffering so a seven month moratorium on executions can now end.  Given that ruling what else would you expect a convicted killer to say.

This ruling also means that the assembly line here in Texas will rev up again and we'll continue our place as the number one executioner of prisoners in the country.  After all, the pro-lifer's here only worry about a life if it's in the womb.  Once you're born, you're on your own.

Just when you start to believe that the Bible is the in-errant word of God...along comes the Catholic church to tell you about the new seven deadly sins that God forgot.  The new sins are:

1. polluting the environment
2. genetic modifications
3. experiments on humans
4. causing social injustice
5. causing poverty
6. becoming obscenely wealthy
7. taking drugs

These replace the old seven deadly sins; sloth, greed, lust, gluttony, pride, envy and wrath.  Does this mean we'll get a new movie?

But seriously, that's quite a list...I'm not sure where to start...

I'm definitely late in posting this, but it's been on my list and I'm just now getting around to it.  Sorry, but better late than never, right.  The 2007 Darwin award winners have been announced and it's an interesting mix this year.  Everything from alcohol enema's to dancing with trains.  So go on over and read the final list and be sad for the poor saps who died or feel glad that the gene pool has been cleansed a bit.  I'll leave that up to you and your conscience.

2007 Darwin Award Winners

Also don't forget, Darwin Day is nearly here.  Mark your calendar, February 12th is Happy Darwin Day, celebrating Darwins birthday.  I'll need to run to Hallmark soon to get my cards.

A bunch of people in Stephenville, TX have reported seeing a UFO.  NPR has a decent report on the event here:  UFO Sightings Stream in From Texas Townfolk.  The reports say it was something like half a mile wide by a mile long with an analogy that it was a big as a Wal-Mart.  Now that's a huge UFO.  This has been picked up by the national media all over the place.  What I want to know is if all these people saw the thing why there isn't one picture or video of the object.  People everywhere have phones with camera's in them and they can capture video as well.  You would think someone could snap a quick shot of this big UFO.  Instead, all the reports talk about how the people who saw it went and got other people to see it instead of grabbing a camera.  Go figure.

I always wonder why UFO's visit these types of towns instead of more major metropolitan areas.  Apparently I'm not alone in wondering this.

I’ve been a little lazy in posting things lately, but that’s partly due to the fact that I was out of town all weekend.  We left Friday night for Waco so my daughter could participate in a tennis tournament there and we didn’t get back until late Sunday, so not much time to get anything posted.

While I was in Waco, I wanted to pick up a local paper to check on the progress of the Texas Ranger Statue.  If you recall, there was a proposal to build a 70 foot tall concrete Texas Ranger in front of the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame Museum that is situated right along I-35.  I had posted about this before here:  Which is Worse

Anyway, the crappy Days Inn hotel we stayed in at least had the courtesy to drop off a Saturday paper to our room and guess what was plastered across the front page…a story about opposition to the statue, with an artists rendition of how it would look.  When I got home Sunday night I tried to download the image from the Waco Tribune-Herald website but they won’t let me get to it without registering, so I’m not going to.  I hate websites that make you register just to read them. I don’t want to give them my email and end up on even more distribution lists.

I did find the image on the website of the organization promoting the statue.

From the article, it seems there is some opposition growing in Waco to the statue.  Apparently some are now seeing it as an eyesore.  The compromise is either going to be a redesign of the statue or "another way to honor the state's most famous law enforcement agency".  There were 443 comments on the statue with 37% completely against it in any form and another 35% who said it should be revised with most of those responses wanting a smaller statue.

Back to the drawing board they go, well actually they are going back to the artist to see what they can do to "get the height established".  Yup, that seems like the most important thing.  Actually, there are some good rational comments in the article about other types of statues to honor the Texas Ranger.  I'm sure they will eventually figure out a way to spend that $650,000 that won't be an "eyesore".

You're probably asking why I'm bothering to post about this.  Well, you see, one of the issues I have with the news media is their penchant to forget about a story if it doesn't wrap up soon after they first report on it.  If the story lingers you never get to hear the ending, they forget about it and move on to the next issue of the day and since I posted about this topic earlier, I felt I needed to follow up until it gets resolved.

Ok, so the headline never really tells the whole story, but a Jew did provide the funds to replace a stolen statue of Jesus for a nativity scene near Miami Florida.  Apparently, the original baby Jesus statue was stolen even though it was bolted down.  So, this guy, Jeffrey Harris from Cincinnati, heard about the theft and decided to help out.

The new Jesus statue has built-in GPS so if this one gets stolen, they will be able to locate it.

If you don't believe me you can read the story at BBC News.

I was going to post about how crazy these people are to be heading to the stores at 4am to catch the early deals for Christmas and how eager they are to spend their money, but then I starting thinking...I just spent a buttload of money on a home theater so what right do I have to criticize these people...none.  Well, at least I didn't lose any sleep over my purchases and I didn't have to fight crazed mall people to get what I wanted.

So instead, I'll just take this opportunity to talk about a new movie that's coming out today in wide release.  It's by Morgan Spurlock, the guy behind Super Size Me and 30 Days.  It's called What Would Jesus Buy which takes a look at the commercialization of Christmas.  The movie follows Reverend Billy from the Church of Stop Shopping on his crusade to stop the Shopocalypse.  Sounds great.  Check out the trailer here.

This is one movie that is definitely being added to my Netflix list.