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Post by phil on Jan 5, 2011 9:13:59 GMT -5
AH! Doc... You'll never change:
When you don't understand something,
you insult people first
then ask questions later...
Atheists don't care for gods or demons, Heavens or Hell...
They don't care either for religious dogmatic people that tell us mere mortals that we'll spend eternity somewhere just because we don't play the game following their rule books instead of our conscience.
Here's another quote in English from Isaac Asimov
(just to make sure you won't think I made a faulty traduction)
"I don't believe in an afterlife, so I don't have to spend my whole life fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more. For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse."
(Isaac Asimov)
'i would not be a part of ANY club which would have ME as a member.'
That's a quote from Groucho Marx BTW...
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Post by RocDoc on Jan 5, 2011 10:37:01 GMT -5
AH! Doc... You'll never change: When you don't understand something, you insult people first then ask questions later... .... but phil, you see i DO certainly understand the english language and i also understand the time-honored meaning of the word 'hell' and what it is a person does to get there, to 'EARN' a trip there, to place it more correctly. common usage and NOT necessarily 'religious' anymore. so i DO 'get' that sentence. to insist on your right to choose hell, in a sentence such as that just rings stupidly, w/o some sort of anarcho-atheist context, that 'i WILL do what i fucking want, NO rules, NO guidelines.' extend this to the mentally ill, THEN you even can say that what mark david chapman did was simply exercising that 'right'. i suppose you ARE trying to explain to me why that twainwannabe's profundity is apt and proper....or even more correctly that the 'atheist book of rules' means that ANYthing pertaining to gods, bible and/or korans are simply for shit and without meaning and therefore the rulebook says to ignore any sort of 'conventional' uses of the entire lexicon within bibles and korans. words which ARE coincidentally ALSO used in normal day-to-day speech of 'believers' and non-believers alike. but (and i've said it here before) HERE we are dealing in the written word. and in english. i read. i understand. and i do not care how militantly you atheists are compelled to campaign against every trace of religious 'pollution'. i do not give a shit. you're duty-bound. great. ...and this implied meaning i am writing about is certainly NOT twisting that guy's (originally french but now ENGLISH) words. my best excuse for his weirdness is that there was maybe something idiomatic in his original usage which doesn't adapt well to english. OTHERWISE w/o that as a defence, an insistence that an absence of the 'right' to choose hell IS his reason to shit on the idea of religionS. maybe it's just one small part of an otherwise uniform excellently sparkling wit... but that sentence right there, translated to english? that just ain't right. my impression. |
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Post by RocDoc on Jan 7, 2011 11:26:55 GMT -5
very interesting understanding of the situation from someone involved... Why the Pahlavi Dynasty Still Haunts Iranians
By Azadeh Moaveni
Thursday, Jan. 06, 2011
When the Pahlavi monarchy was approaching its final days in power in Iran, I was playing with Cabbage Patch Kids dolls in Cupertino, Calif., and thought that my friends' parents who worked for Apple ran an orchard. The diaspora community of Iranians around me talked politics incessantly, and I remember hearing vastly varied things about the Shah of Iran, who lost power in the 1979 revolution. Some of my relatives credited him with great feats, like transforming Tehran into a modern city; one elderly great-aunt kept a portrait of him and his wife, the Empress Farah, on her bedside table. Others called him a torturer, and avoided the Iranian man at the neighborhood pool with the Shah's face tattooed on his shoulder. He was a former agent of the SAVAK, the Shah's dreaded secret service, and he seemed to inspire a shadow of terror even in the California sunshine.
I grew up to study political science and work in Iran as a reporter, and managed to develop an adult understanding of the Pahlavi family's role in Iranian history. But that mature knowledge coexists with all the associations I absorbed as a child. Like so many Iranians, I find my feelings toward the Pahlavis a complex jumble of personal dreams and resentments, and the intensity of my emotions reminds me that they have as much to do with my past, my family and my relationship to history as the royal family itself.
The tragic suicide of Alireza Pahlavi, the Shah's youngest son, this week in Boston has stoked great feeling among Iranians everywhere. When I first heard the news, I felt an enormous sadness for Farah, who has endured more piercing losses in the course of a lifetime than most people could bear. The death of her by-then-exiled husband from cancer, the 2001 suicide of her daughter Leila and now the death of her youngest son. True, I had been feeling rather disappointed in Farah until that moment. She was all over the film Valentino: The Last Emperor, which I'd recently seen, and I couldn't help but wish that instead of just mingling with the fashion glitterati of Europe, she would engage in thoughtful charity and be terribly glamorous — like Queen Rania of Jordan.
I later wondered why I felt so strongly about how Farah, 72, occupied herself in her elderly Parisian exile. Did it matter much to anyone, let alone Iran? I realized that part of why I cared so much was that she remained the lone figure in the Iranian First Lady department of my mind. We know next to nothing about the wives of the mullahs. Mrs. Khatami, Mrs. Ahmadinejad — who knows what they even look like, let alone how they spend their time and what they contribute to Iran? The clerical government of Iran denies Iranians a First Family to grow up with — to admire, to envy, to criticize. We are left to feel our place acutely as outsiders to the clannish, insular fiefdom of the ruling mullahs, undeserving as citizens of even knowing their wives and children.
Perhaps that is why I continue to hold Farah and her family to such high standards. They continue to be the First Family of my imagination, a reflection of my fierce wish to be a part of what happens to Iran, to feel included in a country that no longer has a place for people like me. My expectations of them are oversize, and my anger toward them is studded with grievances against the Islamic Republic, as though the family members are to blame for the three decades of often brutal misrule that followed them.
Iranians these days cannot vent their political opinions in newspapers or on television, so they use the Internet as a forum to say all the things they so urgently need to express about their plight. Reading the posts of young Iranians on Facebook and on the BBC Persian service's website after the news of the suicide came out, I was struck by how so many young people who weren't even born during the Pahlavi era were roused by Alireza's death. Many expressed their sympathy in messages that were remarkable for their emotional and political maturity; they reminded me that living under dictatorship can make young people as wise as 40-year-olds in first-world democracies.
Many were incensed that anyone might feel sympathy for a Pahlavi. These are the angry Iranians who have given up on the mullahs entirely, for the prospect of meaningful, peaceful change seems a chimerical notion, inconceivable for their generation. Their despair — over lives disfigured by economic blight, in which simple dreams like finding a job or getting married seem permanently out of reach — is so easily channeled into fury with the Pahlavis. It is as though they want to scream at them with the bitterness of children accusing a parent, "You let us down, you fumbled, it is all your fault." It is almost a familial dysfunction: so many Iranians rushing like angry relatives at the chance to lay their anger at Iran's fate at the feet of the Pahlavis, whose failure turned Iran over to the mullahs. Decades after the fall of the Shah, the clan remains a politically acceptable target for so many painful feelings.
The family remains of great emotional relevance to Iranians. The Pahlavis themselves know that they stand no chance of being reinserted into Iran politically, though they must more than suspect that their moments of personal grief will be reflected in monumental ways on the larger stage of the Iranian political imagination. Indeed, the initial statement by older brother Reza on his website starkly attributed Alireza's suicide to the younger man's despair over Iran — an all-too-blatant political stance that only opened the family up to criticism. Certainly, the shattering fall of his father and the dislocation of exile contributed to Alireza's depression and pain. But just as surely, any suicide in a depressed person arises when such anguish combines with intimate factors from that individual's genealogy, biochemistry and medical history.
But the family changed tack. On Wednesday afternoon, I heard Reza speaking bravely and honestly about his brother's battle with depression in television interviews. I felt an immense relief. His comments were nuanced and candid. They broke the Iranian cultural taboo against acknowledging mental illness, and underscored a point most Iranians everywhere can relate to: families suffer when they are torn apart. Thirty years after the Shah's fall, the Pahlavis are no longer anyone's enemy, and in their grief lies an opportunity to reach out across all those lines that divide.
www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2041031,00.html |
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JACkory
Struggling Artist
Posts: 167
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Post by JACkory on Jan 9, 2011 19:38:45 GMT -5
i cannot help but conclude that your jean rostand is full of shit, phil. sorry. the 'right' to prefer hell? perhaps something is lost in some sort of cheeky preferred translation, but generally, the provison of 'hell' is for those engaging in capital crimes, molestation and being on the hurtful 'bad' side of society's moral/ethical compass. this guy would wish the 'RIGHT' (it's all good, eh?) to choose THAT, fucking people over, even to the extreme of killing them? Your perception of hell, in the biblical sense, is skewed and frankly a bit juvenile. Methinks you take Rostand's statement too literally. Then again, I see the quote as little more than your by-the-numbers atheist jibber-jabber, meant to confuse. Though I haven't read anything by the man, I would almost bet that his perception of paradise is every bit as fucked up as yours of hell. God love an atheist, but they're generally as annoying and clueless about this kind of thing as the faithful. They just seem to me to be, for the most part, less tolerant, and that's no fucking joke. Not meaning to paint all atheists with the same brush, mind you. Plenty of good 'uns out there. |
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Post by RocDoc on Jan 10, 2011 8:51:30 GMT -5
.... Your perception of hell, in the biblical sense, is skewed and frankly a bit juvenile. Methinks you take Rostand's statement too literally. Then again, I see the quote as little more than your by-the-numbers atheist jibber-jabber, meant to confuse. Though I haven't read anything by the man, I would almost bet that his perception of paradise is every bit as fucked up as yours of hell. ... jac, its biblical sense was not what i was after anyway, so? as someone like rostand (and most atheists) sees the bible as a source of ridicule anyway. or more correctly ridicule of the literal BELIEF in some dork reverend/bible scholar's interpretation of it. i mentioned the possibility of rostand having a bit less of a dunderhead take on his 'target' purely through being 'lost in translation' as well. i was actually looking to cut the guy some slack seeing as he's some sort of a french pseudo mark twain (presumably without the, gah, racism, eh?)...so i needed (and intended) to dumb down and universalize 'hell' to the most common everyday usage, which agostics and even atheists could see as representative. skewed and juvenile as opposed to 'true' and fully matured? what's that actually supposed to imply? ah, the one and only accurate depiction for you then. but i thought you'd given that up. hell's different things to different people jac. i thought you knew that by now. |
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Post by RocDoc on Jan 10, 2011 18:34:38 GMT -5
speaking of... Huck Finn stirs up trouble again
Clarence Page
January 9, 2011
Making good on a campaign promise, the Republican-dominated 112th House of Representatives opened with a reading of the Constitution. But the leaders copped out of reading some of the most thought-provoking parts.
They decided to read only the Constitution-as-amended. That means they left out parts of which we in today's America are not so proud — like the clause in Article I that declared slaves would be counted for purposes of reapportionment as only three-fifths of a person.
As a result, today's Congress, for all of the members' constitutional reverence, shoved significant teachable moments into a closet like embarrassing cousins. Such are the symptoms of denialism, a willful blindness to inconvenient moral contradictions. The Framers showed similar discomfort when they wrote "others" as a euphemism for "slaves" in that founding document of our land of the otherwise-free.
Today, "slave" has itself become a euphemism for an even more problematic word, "nigger." A new NewSouth Books edition of Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" substitutes the S-word for Twain's famous 219 uses of the N-word. It also substitutes "Indian" for Twain's colloquial "Injun."
I have no doubt that the new version's editor, Auburn University professor Alan Gribben, means well. Unlike the many critics who have tried to ban the book, Gribben actually wants to expand its audience. Schoolchildren, black and white, have told him of emotional pain triggered by Twain's repeated use of a word that has bludgeoned many black children as a taunt by white bullies.
As a result, to Gribbens' dismay and mine, "Huck" has begun to be marginalized ironically into Twain's definition of a "classic," a work "which people praise and don't read."
Even so, I am disappointed. As with our readings of the Constitution, I think we should teach history without diluting its uncomfortable realities.
As a black kid who read "Huck" in a mostly white classroom with a white teacher, I know the unsettling startling pain of seeing the N-word used so casually in print. But I also am eternally grateful to our teacher for helping us to talk about it. She helped us to appreciate the book's genius of language, vision and, most memorable, its quietly subversive satirical cleverness. It skewers the immorality of white supremacy that it so vividly portrays.
Young Huck's moral compass is warped by his drunken, brutal father and the culture in which Huck was raised, as his casual use of the N-word illustrates. Escaping his father, he unexpectedly teams up with the slave Jim. He feels guilty at first about helping his neighbor's "property" escape. Yet as he gets to know Jim and his desire to rescue his wife and children, the slave becomes a better father figure than the one Huck left behind. To me, the book is that rare classic that I not only praise but still enjoy reading.
Today's reader can hear in Twain's voices the cultural roots of today's social satirists as varied as Chris Rock, P.J. O'Rourke or Tina Fey, once you subdue your anti-N-word reflexes. That really shouldn't be too tough for today's youngsters, saturated as many of them are by black rappers who use the N-word with impunity.
Besides, making the book less controversial might make it more palatable for many classrooms, but it also risks taking away its edge, the risky subversive power of Twain's words and story that kept my classmates and me awake, alert and talking about it.
As with the Constitution and other history lessons, the best compromise between those who want to censor uncomfortable facts and those who don't is to "teach the conflict," as Gerald Graff suggested in his 1992 book "Beyond the Culture Wars." Instead of dodging the uncomfortable, incorporate the political correctness arguments into the lesson itself.
That's a tall order for some teachers and principals who already have more controversies to resolve than they care to handle. But I would rather see "Huck Finn" restricted to eighth-graders and older than see it shoved out of sight or watered down.
We should teach youngsters about history, not try to protect them from it.
Clarence Page is a member of the Tribune's editorial board and blogs at chicagotribune.com/pagespagecpage@tribune.com
www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/ct-oped-0109-page-20110109,0,2376473.column
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JACkory
Struggling Artist
Posts: 167
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Post by JACkory on Jan 12, 2011 11:27:10 GMT -5
Oh, I see. Didn't notice that you used quotation marks around the word 'hell'. I guess you were talking about H-E-Double Hockeysticks.
My bad. I was under the impression that "Hell", "Sheol" blah blah blah were uniquely confined to the Judeo Christian tradition. But it's the WORD 'hell' you're talking about, and whatever baggage it comes with TO YOU. Okay, that's fine and dandy.
It is just a word, though. There is no such place. Although I have heard that Chicago gets pretty rough this time of year.
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Post by phil on Jan 15, 2011 11:15:52 GMT -5
HA! HA! HA! This is too funny!!
Banning 'Money For Nothing?'
by Castanet Staff - Story: 59498
Jan 14, 2011 / 5:03 pm
A Grammy award winning song has been deemed unacceptable for radio play in Canada after a single person complained about it.
In a ruling released on Wednesday, the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council says the 1980s song Money for Nothing by the British rock band Dire Straits contravenes the human rights clauses of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters' Code of Ethics and Equitable Portrayal Code.
The ruling stems from a complaint lodged last year by a radio listener in St. John's, Newfoundland. The listener took offense at the use of the word "faggot" in its lyrics.
The radio station, CHOZ-FM, argued that the song has been played countless times since its release and is an award winning song, but the council concluded that the word, even if once acceptable, has evolved to become unacceptable in most circumstances.
Kelowna's two rock stations, K96.3 and Power 104, have no problem with the council's decision.
K96.3 Program Director David Larson says "We do play the song and it's not a ban on the song. They've just asked radio stations to play the edited version which takes out the offensive word. It was written by Mark Knopfler and the whole song is kind of a parody and it's 'tongue in cheek' and I don't think that offense was intended, but I can see where offense might be taken".
Over at Power 104, Program Director Bob Mills agrees the use of the word can be inflammatory. "In this day and age, and given the climate of the world we live in, with bullying and name calling, we have to be sensitive."
The song has been on Power's play list for a long time, but Mills says they have used the edited version for years. "When we received word of the ruling we found that we haven't played the version with the word in it for quite some time and no one has ever phoned to complain."
While Mills and Larson both agree the decision is unique, they also feel it's not an over reaction by Big Brother.
"I think its part of living in Canada and understanding that where possible, we don't want to offend various groups. I'm comfortable with it, but I can see where some people might take the opposite view that their creativity is challenged." says Larson.
Meanwhile, the Okanagan Rainbow Coalition says they support the decision of the CBSC.
"Though we feel the controversy has been blown a bit out of proportion, the board is simply following its standards of barring other derogatory words and references from commercial airplay." says the Coalition executive in a statement emailed to Castanet.
"When the song was released in 1985 the word 'faggot' was unfortunately acceptable to many people. Highlighting that today these words are not allowed on public airwaves helps remind society in general that they are not acceptable and still hurtful to a community."
The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council is an independent, non-governmental group created to administer standards established by its members, Canada's private broadcasters. Its membership includes more than 700 private radio and TV stations across the country.
The panel noted that Money for Nothing would be acceptable for broadcast if suitably edited.
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Post by Ayinger on Jan 15, 2011 12:23:12 GMT -5
I saw that too ---- is the thing even played on the radio anymore??
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Post by RocDoc on Jan 15, 2011 16:57:52 GMT -5
dreadfully.
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Post by RocDoc on Jan 26, 2011 0:43:00 GMT -5
'putin vows revenge....'
i like that.
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Post by phil on Jan 26, 2011 9:45:45 GMT -5
'putin vows revenge....'
i like that.
Sure you do!!
Russian revenge...
What's not to love...??
You, of all people, should know what it could mean...
Who cares about justice anyway
when you can have bloody revenge!!
HÉ! Russians are not so bad after all... Right??
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Post by RocDoc on Jan 26, 2011 13:55:19 GMT -5
it's simple, dear phil.
just as YOU delight in seeing the US of A's balls being cut off in a multitude of ways, i also derive some satisfaction in seeing russia's EQUALLY voluminous balls being being put to the blade as well.
far fetched a possibility, you think?
even ASIDE from the ssr's subjugation of ALL they touched..
motherfuckers lorded over the UN (along with frahnce) when dubya was trying to get a quorum for a polylateral action on iraq, with an 'oh my islamic brothers have done nothing against me' - all the while, doing relatively large business with them, dealing them arms and nuclear technology and construction crews and equipment..
yes, they've for years now certainly goaded the chechens in a major way. though the chechens are definitely no prize as a people.
but again, the muslim world DOES take notice of such a thing...and this sure serves to embroil their 'untouchable' parochiality into this worldwide mess which 'The West" (western europe and the USA, largely) is in the middle of.
pan-arab and pan-asian islamists are already making sure this doesn't remain JUST an 'internal russian matter' the way russia would prefer.
and yes any russian payback will be a motherfucker.
much as YOU say that the USA oh-so-horribly tramples civil rights and due process, the russians do not give a fuck what ANYone thinks.
the more brutal the comeuppance the better.
in that regard, i see them as making US look good.
until of course even bigger bombs begin blowing up in moscow.
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Post by RocDoc on Jan 27, 2011 8:04:16 GMT -5
i fucking KNOW we're not guilty of anywhere near the same. and for any one of the eastern europe-impaired folks here, to think that we are, is pretty goddamned typical. in modern times, what the bolsheviks and stalin did, and what stalin INSTITUTIONALIZED is off the damned scale. many know this. not here however. apparently. ~ today's time magazine: How Russia Created Its Own Islamic Terrorism Problem
news.yahoo.com/s/time/20110127/wl_time/08599204454000 |
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Post by RocDoc on Jan 27, 2011 10:33:22 GMT -5
after you've read it (IF you fucking read it), comments like:
Ben 1 hour ago
It depends on your point of view but most independent observes would say this is a fight over land and who administers it. The islamic element is usefull for both sides. The Chechens get fighters, access to a weapons market and money. The Russians can dodge pressure from the west over the issue by inserting the words "islamic" and "terrorism" and gain a bit of legitimacy. Problem is the Chechen gorilla army is gone, they can’t even stage a descent insurgency anymore, and it is becoming about religion now. All they are left with is a few hardliners who think blowing up schools will get their land back. Clearly it won’t
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