www.jeffthefish.com

Live blogging.

“Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place, and science leads you to killing people.” - Ben Stein

“Not long after our wedding, we were awakened in the middle of the night in our own bedroom by deputy sheriffs and actually arrested for the ‘crime’ of marrying the wrong kind of person. Our marriage certificate was hanging on the wall above the bed. The state prosecuted Richard and me, and after we were found guilty, the judge declared: ‘Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.’ He sentenced us to a year in prison, but offered to suspend the sentence if we left our home in Virginia for 25 years exile.” - Mildred Loving

“There’s no genetic basis for any kind of rigid ethnic or racial classification at all…I’m always asked is there Greek DNA or an Italian gene, but, of course, there isn’t. . . . We’re very closely related.” - Bryan Sikes

In case some of you haven’t seen this, here it is:

I used to go to this church.

When I was doing my “research” for my Larry Norman pun, I came across a crazy person’s web site!

Here is a minimal background story: Larry Norman was a Christian musician whose heyday was in the 60s and 70s. With church kids my age, he is probably most famous for the apocalyptic song “I Wish We’d All Been Ready”, as popularized in a DC Talk cover.

Anyway, Larry at some point realized that Christian pop music was becoming cheesy, and that secular music was….less cheesy. So he wrote a song called “Why Should The Devil (Have All The Good Music?)”. It was really meant to be as tongue-in-cheek as it sounds. It was also meant to be a sort of plea for Christian musicians to make quality, innovative music.

But fundamentalists can be nuts.

These folks use sophisticated logic like:

“…where did ‘Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music?’ actually come from? The ‘mis-quote’ was taken from a message Reverend Rowland Hill, pastor of Surrey Chapel in London, preached in 1844. Reverend Hill did NOT say, ‘Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music?’ — what he actually said was, ‘The devil should not have all the best tunes.’ “

Wow, big diff lol.

But my absolute fav part was when they said: “Let’s conduct an observable, provable and scientific experiment…”

1. You missed Larry’s point completely didn’t you?
2. Observable? HAHAHAHAHA
3. Provable? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
4. SCIENTIFIC? JAJAJAJAJAJAJAJAJAJAJAJAJAJA (that’s how they laugh in Mexico)

So what’s the experiment?

“Here are two songs in RealAudio. Listen to both. You decide — which one is GOOD! And also which one is the DEVIL’S.”

Holy frick. So I did it. They did not make it easy. The first song is a heavy metal song featuring a guy grunting things like “God is dead and now you die.” I personally don’t like heavy metal, but the music was fine. The vocals, meh.

The second song was a lawrencewelkian version of Some Generic Hymn. Acoustic guitar playing predictable chords, predictable (OMG is it predictable!) three part harmony, generic lyrics, violin solo exactly where it’s supposed to be.

And the site never explains which song is better and more importantly, why one of those songs is better! It’s supposed to be self-evident, I guess.

So which one is good? Neither is very good, but the second one, in my Official  Internet Opinon, is less good than the first. Which one is the devil’s? Over the top, anti-religious lyrics or overwhelmingly bland formulaic music that makes would-be believers vomit? Is this a trick question?

The page goes on and on with logical fallacy after logical fallacy. I’d make fun of all of it, but there’s only one Internet and I don’t want to waste it all.

Not sure if he should or not, but I think we can all agree that he currently does. EM EFFING TIT, PEOPLE!!

The last time we talked about balut, I left you with the following questions:

• How aware is the embryo of its environment?
• Does it have a developed nervous system that will allow it to feel the pain of being boiled alive?
• Does refrigeration humanely euthanize the embryo?

To answer these questions, I contacted the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle. Unfortunately, they didn’t know the answers to my questions, but they had some informed guesses:

Dear Jason,

We’re extremely sorry for the delay in getting back to you. These questions were posed to our bird curator and veterinarian and they both didn’t have solid answers, however the general concensus is that in all likelihood the development of the egg would most likely stop when it is not properly incubated. How long for the development to stop was up to debate and would rely very much on the surroundings temperatures and conditions.

In terms of whether this is “humane” they couldn’t really hazard a guess, but death of the embryo would likely result from removal of adequate incubation. You might want to stick with unfertilized chicken eggs!

Sincerely,
Woodland Park Zoo
Seattle, WA

Now, I am not against the slaughter of animals for human consumption, but I am against causing them unnecessary suffering. My next step is to buy a dozen unfertilized farm fresh duck eggs from Pike Place Market and see how they taste hard-boiled. I bet they taste just as good as balut*!

*OK, I’ll be honest here. The last two balut that I ate made me gag. I used to poke fun at Filipino Friend because she told me that the reason she quit eating balut was that she realized that she was eating an entire duck. I thought that was silly. Now, I know how she feels. After I took those graphic balut pictures, I was unable to eat balut again. I’m so disappointed in myself!

Go check out Iron Man: Exposed, a detailed look at the Robert Downey, Jr. movie Iron Man: No Intelligence Allowed. They’ll show you why this movie is not a documentary at all, but anti-science propaganda aimed at creating the appearance of controversy where there is none.

OK, not really.  But how cool would it be if I weren’t too lazy to build a parody of this site?

Sam Harris is preparing to do an fMRI study on belief and disbelief, and needs help in determining the stimuli.  You can help him by answering the surveys linked to on his homepage.

He only wants responses from people who are either dedicated Christians or atheists. I’m not sure if I can respond.  It all depends on what is meant by the word “dedicated”.

_____ed to perfection.

On the way to dinner on Friday night, I passed a pair of signs that were so amazing that I had to turn around to get pictures of them.

I can take this two ways. At first I thought that if you were actually trying to get rid of rats and ants, you shouldn’t go to this place. You’ll end up with more rats and ants than you can handle!

But it has occurred to me that maybe they really do want to rid the world of pests, and these signs are taunting them. “Come on in, rats and ants! Come relax and have a beer! Not!!!”