Christopher Hitchens.

Christopher Hitchens has died.   I was saddened by this news.  He has been one of my favorite thinkers on the subject of religion and discourse.  I was sad that I would never get to meet him.   And then he told me that I would. Not in some vague way of some supposed afterlife, but right here and now.  His works are at my disposal to learn from or fail to do so as I choose.

Is marriage a civil right?

Marriage is not a civil right.  Or at least that is what Ann Coulter would have you believe.   She expressed her opinion at this year's HomoCon.   Which is in this case a contraction of homosexual with both convention and conservative.   Conservative enough to value the lifestyle of the ancient Greeks.

Images of the Prophet(s)

The Abrahamic faiths have something against imagery as used in worship. Thou Shalt not make Graven Images was put right into the decalogue about 4 places before murder. SO we should know that this is serious business. By the way, graven means carved. As in statues which were often used as devotional objects, but it is typically taken to mean any image used for religious purposes. Anyway this seems to be extended to all representations. So, Charlton Heston dressed as Moses in a movie? Bad idea.

Chuck, you are holding the dang thing in your hand, at least read it!

I scream for ice cream. (That's what she said)

Antonio Federici Gelatto has released some controversial ads. The london based italian style ice cream makers have generated some briliant PR, by releasing an advertisement campaign which is just offensive enough to get into the news and just interesting enough to get people to want to see it. This is how I first heard of it. And as you can see, I was interested enough to share it with you. memetic infection at it's finest. The other interesting this about the free advertising that I and others are providing is, that even if you are offended you are more aware of the brand. The offense will fade, brand awareness will not.

Below are the images that CNN decided not to reprint, but instead describe. I would question this practice of drawing your attention to something and then denying that thing as a cock tease and bad reporting. But I have noticed that when it comes to religiously offensive imagery that is the standard for news. Remember the whole flurry of stories about cartoonists being attacked for drawing cartoons? No? Well maybe you remember it as being about drawings of the Prophet Mohammad, but never being shown those drawings. In another post I might do that, but for now here are some ads for ice cream.

Why I don't capitalize god.

The rules of English are fairly clear about capitalization, and I believe that members of the other English speaking nations will agree with me on them, even if they disagree with my spelling (most people from my own nation would too). We capitalize words at the beginning of sentences, and proper nouns (which we can't use in scrabble or bananagrams). All other instances of capitalization are typographical preference of a reverse ee cummings sort, or because we are stupidly TRYING TO MAKE A POINT ON THE INTERNET. This brings me to the word god. I often stumble upon this word in a capitalized variety, when it meets none of the previously mentioned criteria, for instance if i were to submit the sentence prior to this to an editor they would find a need to capitalize it, and also chances are to make this into more than one sentence but THAT at least is advisable. However if someone were to do it they would wrong me. Moreover if someone were to quote me as saying something about god, and capitalize it they would be doing me a slander (well really a libel but that doesn't flow quite as well). Now some people at this point have raised the argument, well truthfully they probably raised it earlier and have already stopped reading this. er anyway. Some would argue that god is a proper noun, to which I retort with a word, or words that will make it past censorship. How is god a proper noun? Is god a country or a person or a trademarked product or such? Lets address the second first as that will be the most common objection. If god is a person, fictional or otherwise, it would be proper to capitalize his or her or its name. However, I find upon inspection, and by that I mean fucking using the language, that god is in fact a singular noun. The plural of which is gods, and either neither or both deserve the upper case. Hmmm. Lets look at that a little closer shall we? If we speak of the Greek gods we capitalize "Greek" a proper noun but not gods. So we can assume that if we were to speak of a Greek god then we would do the same, after all we don't go from games to Game or from congregation to Sucker, now do we? But wait, our fictional critic cries, my god is god so that should be capitalized. OK, lets examine that statement.... First what god is your god? is it Poseidon, because I have no problem there. Is it Zeus, Hermes, Yahweh, Jesus, Allah, Krishna, Buddha, Set, Amon, The Flying Spaghetti Monster? Still good with me, but god is just a term used to refer to any one of these characters and if we refer to any number of them greater than one, we use the plural gods. Now I will move on to god as a trademarked product, by which I really mean, god as a protected concept. As long as we have to capitalize this otherwise normal singular noun the more certain people can capitalize upon that. Memetics at its finest. why does this intellectual product get afforded such special care? It is mostly tradition of being scared to utter the name of a powerful being lest the sympathetic power (believed to be) inherent in names call them to you. Which is why all sorts of words are used in place of Jesus' name in Christianity. Words such as lamb, god, lord, savior, et cetera. However if you use a word to refer to something long enough that word will simply become the name of the thing. Most names of things are presumably derived in this way. However if you also still use the name, or at least a name, then the others may simply be nicknames or pet names. Lamb, I think, is a good example of that. Ultimately my point here is to enforce common rules of language and avoid giving undue credit to one idea amongst many. Otherwise I may have to invent a god called "the" and insist that anytime that word appears it must be in the uppercase. I have no doubt if I convinced enough people of the veracity of the The, then the blind pluralism of our culture would support me. Provided that The was also Jesus at least.

Thank god we're not all atheists...

In this article, in the Sydney Morning Herald some Australian bishop and arch-bishop (which I believe moves like a bishop plus a knight) lambasted atheists just in time for good friday where their tradition claims that only one lamb need be slaughtered. Rather than simply typing snide comments about it, I decided that I should take them seriously in the claims they are making about the lack of belief which 16% of the world seem to hold. Or not hold since it is a lack of belief. The dear bishop Fisher suggests that this godlessness gives direct rise to mass murdering dictatorships. While the arch-bishop Pell seems to only be claiming that atheists are uncharitable.