Some of you may know who Tim Minchin is, some of you may not.  He is a musical, comic, performance artist with a skeptical bent and is very entertaining.  He will be performing in Atlanta at Center Stage on Thursday, July 14.

A little about the man:

Tim Minchin is an Australian, musician, actor, comedian and writer. He has been performing his unique brand of musical comedy in front of appropriately excitable and ever growing audiences since starting out in South Melbourne’s Butterfly Club in 2005. He won the Director’s Award at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival for his break-out show Darkside, and followed this later the same year with one of the most successful debut acts ever at the Edinburgh Fringe – winning the Perrier Award for Best Newcomer. Without wanting to go on and on about it, he’s done some pretty successful live shows since then, often in Australia or the UK, but also on the North American continent (yes that includes you too Canada). But not you Guatemala. Maybe one day.

His current songs span topics such as environmentalism, rationalism, prejudice(ism) and his amour de boobs(ism). In fact it would hardly be over the top to say that his love of boobs would be up there in the back of Plato’s cave in the bit that’s carved out for the most perfect and complete example of the love of boobs. But not in a weird way. During his shows he plays the piano, always nicely and oftentimes wildly and excitingly, whilst looking wonderfully athletic, in a pair of delightfully uncomfortable skinny jeans.

You can get an idea of his act here:

I hate to quote the Moonie Times as much as anybody does, but this article attracted my attention on a Google Alert. Please read the article, and I’d appreciate any input from our Atlantans Vindaloo, and from any other Indians or people familiar with Indian politics. I also have to admit that I am relying entirely on the account of this speech and its aftermath from the Washington Times, which is probably foolhardy of me.

In February (in typical wingnut fashion, the article is very light on facts/dates and verifiable sources, a hard habit to break) Indian Ambassador Meera Shankar spoke at Emory University’s Emerging India Summit in Atlanta. Her speech was about the political, ethnic, and religious diversity of India. As part of this speech, she mentioned that Sonia Gandhi, leader of the Congress Party (the largest party in India), is Christian.

In trying to avoid the toxic effects of religion in southwest Asia, India tends to entirely eliminate any comment or attention on political leaders’ religious beliefs and practices. In keeping with that, when the Indian Embassy published Mrs. Shankar’s speech, it censored any mention of Gandhi’s religion from the speech.

This offended certain forces in the Indian Press, since her speech was about religious diversity. I only know about one or two sources in India from the Washington Times article. I don’t know anything about their political/religious leanings, if they’re as crazy as the Times, nor do I know this about any of the two or three other sources that turn up on a GoogleNews search.

What do you think? Is it healthier in India to avoid mention of religion about politicians? Would that be healthier in the Middle East? Would that be healthier in Georgia? It should go without saying that part of this avoidance of discussing religion of politicians in India includes the politicians themselves avoiding the subject. I don’t think we have a hope of that in US politics, especially not in Georgia. I do fully support the idea of censoring any public mention of a politician’s religion, though most of those would be censoring the politician him/herself.

Once upon a time there was a young blond-headed boy who would sometimes ride with his parents out to his grandparents’ house. Often during these trips, his grandparents and parents, when discussing options for dinner, would decide to go out. The whole clan would then hop into the boy’s grandmother’s Lincoln Continental and they would drive about five or ten minutes to a restaurant he’d been to many times. It was a restaurant he always enjoyed visiting.

To be continued after the break . . .

» Continue reading “They Didn’t Invent Intolerance, Just the Intolerance Sandwich”

Governor-elect Nathan Deal of Gainesville, Georgia, has incorporated several religious activities into his inauguration festivities, according to his hometown paper, the Gainesville Times.

It all starts with a prayer service at 9:00 AM on January 10th at “the” Mount Paran Church of God, which will include a choir from his home church, First Baptist Church of Gainesville.

“There has been a long-standing tradition that governors and constitutional officers on the morning of the inaugural have begun their day with a time of prayer. We are going to continue that tradition,” [Deal spokesman Harris] Blackwood said. “This will be a very ecumenical event that will be inclusive of various religions and beliefs.”

One would like to perform a constitutional test of the limits of his inclusion…

The prayer service will be open to the public, as will the 2pm inaugural at the state capitol. It is all funded by private contributions.

This is a longer version of my research posted at The Examiner.  You can comment there without having to sign-in.

As a vocal skeptic, I’ve become known among my friends and family as the go-to person to determine whether or not news stories or photos on the Internet are true.  Sometimes this just means going to Snopes.com to check and see and see what the folklore researchers have come up with.  Other times I have to dig in and do the research myself.  The latest piece of dubious dumbness to come across my desk is a photo purported to be of Arizona Hispanic protesters out complaining about the new state law the state just passed.

This photo is currently circulating in e-mails. It appears to be a fake.

It is an e-mail with the subject line of “VERY SCARY: Give us free” and contains this image, along with the following text:  

I started by checking the Snopes site, but so far they don’t have an analysis up.   Message boards battered back and forth on whether or not the sign could be real.  Some people feel that even if the photo is fake, that this is a real sentiment in the Arizona Latino community.

But does it show a real sign?  Many investigators are looking to find a copy of the original photo, or supplemental photos of the setting to see if any other evidence supports the idea that the sign is real, or evidence that will falsify it.  I suspect the latter is more likely.

Original photo of protest of WBC. Courtesy SkepticRN

Here is a crude fake of that photo wherein I replaced the perfectly sensible original message with something silly.

Areas around the lettering show thick black and the letters stark white.

  

 Now, let’s compare those known fakes to the the “Arizona” protest photo.  First, again, here is the protest photo that has been doing the rounds on the chain e-mail circuit, and directly below it is the ELA analysis:

ELA of the "Arizona" photo also shows distinct areas of alteration.

 The similarities between my admitted fake and this photo are quite obvious.  They are especially apparent in the lower sign, the one threatening future cop killings. This suggests that the top part of the sign may not have been as heavily altered.

Just to be clear, this image shows very, very strong evidence of being altered.

History is full of people faking evidence to fulfill their bigoted fantasies or support their ideologies.  From the Protocols of the elders of zion to Obama’s birth-certificate conspiracy theory, people have used their creative powers to make the world the way they think it ought to be.   Still, with the Internet it is now possible for serious researchers to join together and collaborate to get to the truth.  

A skeptic investigator wants to be as definitive as the evidence will allow.  In this case the evidence strongly supports this being a faked photograph altered to create the incendiary message it currently carries.  It is extremely likely that other photos from the May 1st protest at the LA Times will come out and show what this man’s sign actually said.  But we don’t need that to know this photo is faked.

I was taking advantage of some downtime from playing Army today, and checked out the AJC site to see what was happening back home. I came across a blog post from Jim Galloway highlighting the state of the current debate over the military’s ban on openly gay soldiers, or the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

For those who don’t know I’ve served in the Infantry for twelve years with three combat tours and I’ve seen it all. I’ve jumped out of airplanes, blew stuff up, shot big guns, and generally put foot to ass for the country that I love, warts and all.  And, to be honest, I didn’t think that having openly gay soldiers serving alongside heterosexual soldiers was a good idea, not even a little bit. My own personal belief was that it would hurt unit cohesion, and when kicking down doors you MUST be able to trust the people around you. If you have family you wouldn’t trust with a potato gun… you know what I’m talking about. » Continue reading “Time to Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is”

As I drove into work this morning in the rain, again, my thoughts went back to a dry day in November 2007. That day the governor of the state of Georgia, Sonny Perdue, joined lawmakers and ministers at the Capitol Building to pray for rain. Naturally, this brought the question of church vs. state and made headlines worldwide. I think more than the religious connotations, it also brought up the idea of looking to mystical ideas to change natural events outside of our direct control. Why not do a rain dance or start some human sacrifices while we’re at it?

God was apparently slow in answering that prayer as the rains didn’t return in force until fall of 2009. And, boy howdy, did the rains return! Much of North Georgia had what was categorized as 500-year flooding in October. Rehearsals for a show I was in at the time were canceled due to rain, something I’ve never experienced before. Since October, we’ve had regular rain, and will probably continue to have rain through the spring. This is all thanks to El Niño, which means “the boy” in Spanish. I’m thinking of petitioning for a name change to El Bastardo.

Anyway, I was thinking of all of this on my morning commute. Apparently, I’m the only one as that prayer meeting in 2007 seems to be old news. No one is blaming the governor for the flooding and non-stop rain. I wonder if we had only received moderate rainfall, bringing Lake Lanier up to full pool over time instead of overnight, would people have praised Perdue for “taking action” in 2007? Is the only reason no one is linking the increase in rain to that prayer because of how destructive the rain has been, because that couldn’t possibly be what God would do, could it? I’m not sure what logical fallacy that might fall into, maybe a form of confirmation bias, it’s just something I find interesting.

As for me, I do blame the governor for all this rain, not because I think the prayer did anything at all, but just because I can. Well, that and he threatens to veto any law allowing Sunday alcohol sales, but that’s a whole different story.

Despite Republicans running all Georgia government, the Christian right in Georgia has lobbied heavily in opposition to a couple of Republican-sponsored bills in the legislature.  They held a press conference together today.  The groups who made it to the press conference were the Georgia Christian Alliance, the Georgia Christian Coalition, Georgian Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition, and the Georgia Baptist Convention.  Georgia Eagle Forum president and former state senator Nancy Schaefer is leading efforts against these bills.  Republican gubernatorial candidate John Oxendine was at the press conference, but did not speak there.  Most of this information comes from this AJC article/blog entry.

The weighty issue they are screaming about, against the Republicans who presented these bills?  The bills would allow young girls (under 16) to be placed into diversionary programs instead of arresting them and putting them into the criminal system with prostitution charges.  The argument in favor of these laws is that legally, children cannot consent to sexual intercourse, and so, legally, cannot be considered guilty of prostitution.  The argument against these bills, best as I can determine, is that the pseudoChristian protestors are just implementing the words of Jesus Christ, when He was asked about the 12-year-old prostitute: “Let that ho fry!”

» Continue reading “Georgia Christians support sending little girls to jail?”