That broadside against Hanukkah by Christopher Hitchens caused a mixed reaction in the camp of Hitch's followers and in that other camp. I was rather amused by that piece.
When Hitch unequivocally states that:
And so we have a semiofficial celebration of Hanukkah, complete with menorah, to celebrate not the ignition of a light but the imposition of theocratic darkness.
he is rather, in the inertia of his monumental (no cynicism here) drive against theocracies of all kinds, throwing the baby away with the water. Besides pissing off lots of people for no good reason, he should have studied the history of that specific holiday.
As I have mentioned, being a surfing lightweight with a short memory, I would have forgotten about this unsuccessful lunge of Hitch's sword, if it were not for a
repartee by Ami Isseroff, who is a formidable opponent for anyone, Hitch included. In this post, which I recommend to both pro- and anti-Hitchenits, Ami neatly demolished that unfortunate article. Just a few quotes, and then read the whole yourself.
The first quote is chosen for its superb acidity:
From Hitchens' point of view, the victory of the American colonists in 1776 was a victory of colonial provincialism and particularism over the magnificent culture and traditions of the British Empire, whilst the expulsion of the British from India must be regretted as a victory of paganism and backwardness over European civilization. Hitchens should also have pointed out that if the story of Passover is true, the Jews escaped from the benefits of the sophisticated culture of Egypt into the primitive wilds of the Sinai desert.
And the second actually demolishes the main postulate of Hitch's grumble:
Hanukkah was not well beloved of Jewish zealots, because the Maccabees were Hellenizers, and because the victory elevated a civil authority as central to the Jewish people, eclipsing the priesthood.
An my own two cents: Hitch clearly doesn't understand the spirit of Hanukkah as it is celebrated today. First of all, like Purim (which could be also reconstructed by Hitch as celebration of backward Jooz gaining an upper hand over the enlightenment of Persian Empire), Hanukkah is mainly a kids' holiday, beloved for many happy reasons (one of them being the presents they get).
Secondly, we have that Maccabee beer - not bad at all. And than, there is a tradition of Maccabee Tel-Aviv giving a bloody nose to a Greek team on the eve of this holiday, which couldn't be all bad, you have to agree...
And the last argument - this time against Hellenism: if I were forced to choose between Hellenism and Judaism (which I am not, thanks Zeus), I would have chosen the latter in a jiffy. How does a normal person cope with such a shitload of gods is absolutely mind-boggling - I barely remember my kids' birthdays. Comparatively, Judaism is what is called today streamlining, I believe...
As both should be, hopefully for all the same reasons.
But many people (mostly of male persuasion) are experiencing mixed feelings about the news.
Oh well...
Above and beyond the global warming, pollution and nuclear waste, a new horrible threat is clouding the blue skies of Australia - the BURGER.
Its shenanigans on Australian soil started not very auspiciously. Some of the first burgers arrived with the driftwood, crossing the ocean on favorable currents, some just fell out from the bags of excited tourists pulling out their cameras from their bags, only to be discarded later into the garbage bins by naive customs employees.
Only a few lucky ones made their way to the back doors of the local eateries. And then the war for survival started in earnest. The gentle and open-hearted local cuisine was hardly a match for the feral newcomers, and whatever the burger lacked in flavor was more than compensated by the toughness of its ingredients. The Vegemite cried and dissolved, the kangaroos' loin hid in the bushes; and the bush tucker, fat succulent grubs included, run away with its tail between its legs...
And now the grief stricken Aussies stand helplessly before the huge (up to 20 ft) wave of cheeseburgers, hamburgers and even veg burgers that has already engulfed the coastal regions and now threatens the innocent inhabitants of the Outback, such as the Redback spider, the Inland Taipan (Oxyuranus microlepidotus) and, of course, the famous and cuddly Drop bear that is facing total extinction as a result...
And the only advice I can offer the suffering Aussies: do unto the Burger what you do unto the feral cats and the brown bogong moths. In other words:
Eat them!
Cannot say I shed a tear for this one.
A murder suspect dubbed "the cannibal" was found dead in his prison cell of an apparent suicide Tuesday, two months after police found cooked and seasoned bits of his girlfriend's corpse on a fork and plate in his apartment.
Nor do I find anything exceptional in this:
Acquaintances, prosecutors and psychologists described Calva as a charismatic, habitual liar who liked to dominate women, whom he sometimes convinced to sell his poems on the street. He also passed himself off as a playwright, television personality, reporter, novelist and actor.
There are indeed quite a few charismatic habitual liars, employed as playwrights, television personalities, reporters, novelists and actors. Not many of them dismember and cook their girlfriends, though.
Live like a dog... Anyway, he probably died of malnutrition. Suicide my foot...
After a few months of preparations, Hugo Chavez has turned the clock in Venezuela back by half an hour.
As Daniel says here:
That is right, out of the blue we are back to that stupid half an hour change of time zone. That way half of Venezuelan kids will have more sun in the morning and the other half less. Works a little bit like the referendum for a constitution that only would have worked for half the country.
But reason has little to do with Comical Hugo decisions lately. Finally he is freed from the grim necessity to live according to the hated Washington time zone...
The greatest quote comes from here, though:
Mr Chavez has dismissed criticism that moving the time only 30 minutes was quirky, questioning why the world had to follow a scheme of hourly divisions he said was dictated by the imperial United States.
It's really becoming pathetic...
According to the latest rumors, Comical Hugo threatens to bite in half the standard meter bar that is kept in Paris. That to spite the Bush family who inflicted the metric system on Venezuela...
| You Scored an A |
You got 10/10 questions correct.
It's pretty obvious that you don't make basic grammatical errors.
If anything, you're annoyed when people make simple mistakes on their blogs.
As far as people with bad grammar go, you know they're only human.
And it's humanity and its current condition that truly disturb you sometimes.
|
Re humanity - oh well, to be fair - it is somewhat redundant in my opinion.
Via
Bun-Girl.
Reuters:
Led Zeppelin reunited for a one-off concert on Monday, a tribute to late music promoter Ahmet Ertegun, who signed the band to Atlantic Records in 1968.
BBC:
The fierce contest for seats has seen millions of fans scrambling for just 9,000 pairs of tickets.
And yesterday morning, I caught it on the radio that 10 Israeli groupies succeeded to get tickets and happily flew away to the concert.
Show ya the power of the Zionist lobby!
A CNN journalist reports (somewhat wistfully, is my impression):
One young woman dances on top of a bar. Another sits on the toilet drinking a beer. Several vomit. One appears with a bruised and bandaged face ("I just got drunk and fell out of a car," she writes.). In another photo, two women urinate into a waterfall.
Then they post the more successful pictures of that debauchery on Facebook. "Thirty Reasons Girls Should Call it a Night", they call it.
And I am stuck here in the stuffy little office...
This headline graces an article in New Scientist (is it like New Labor or neo-con, I wonder? and what is wrong with the old fashioned science?).
Well, I know what is wrong with an article that says:
A study in Israel shows that voters can be manipulated into changing their attitudes by being shown subliminal images of their national flag.
A team led by psychologist Ran Hassin at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem divided volunteers into two groups: those who strongly identified with Israeli nationalism and those who identified with it only weakly. They then quizzed them about their attitude to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict after showing them a brief image of an Israeli flag or a control image. The image appeared for long enough to be registered by the brain but not long enough for conscious awareness
Those who had viewed the flag shifted their position towards the middle ground: both right-wingers and left-wingers became less extreme.
Without any subliminal influence I can tell you that this theory is full of shit. There are only two measures (combined) that can possibly influence the rabid ultra-left and extra-right:
Intermittently and the more the merrier. And if this treatment fails, and only as a last resort - forced watching of these images:
Yeah... and keep that Valium handy...
Hat tip to Will.
It is condoms to hair bands in this case.
It could be that someone is pulling our collective leg, of course, but so far no one called the bluff.
Used condoms are being recycled into hair bands in southern China, threatening to spread sexually-transmittable diseases they were originally meant to prevent, state media reported Tuesday.
If you are interested in technical details, more here.
Thankfully, I don't need a hair band anymore...
PROMETA(R) represents an innovative approach to managing alcohol, cocaine, or methamphetamine dependence that is designed to address physiological, nutritional, and psychosocial aspects of the disease, and is thereby intended to offer patients an opportunity to achieve sustained recovery.
Psychosocial... mmm... does it go with Scotch too?
Bishop, when you used to dance for Mandela’s freedom, we Africans – all over Africa – joined in. Our support was key in your freedom. But when children in Burundi and Kinshasa, all the way to Liberia and Sierra Leone, and in particular in Sudan, cried and called for rescue, you heard but chose to be silent.
So where is Desmond Tutu when my people call out for freedom? Slaughter and genocide and slavery are lashing Africans right now. Where are you for Sudan, Bishop Tutu? You are busy attacking the Jewish state. Why?"
This an
more by Simon Deng, a native of the Shiluk Kingdom in southern Sudan, an escaped jihad slave and a leading human rights activist.
Via
Philosemite with thanks.
The original research by Dr R Quian Quiroga, of the University's Department of Engineering, showed that one neuron fired to, for instance, Jennifer Aniston, another one to Halle Berry, another one to the Sydney Opera House, etc.
I surely have a problem with this news item. Even several problems:
- First of all, there is a shadow of racism somewhere in it
- The "discovery" is ageist as well - no "neuron" fired in my case
- What kind of a progress is made by calling the good old libido by a scientific name like "neuron" anyway?
It is not that I think that Norm is expecting any answers to these, fairly rhetoric questions, but as an ex-student used to a certain level of discipline, when your prof asks you better answer:
How can prominent members of the British left - people like Ken Livingstone, Harold Pinter, Tony Benn, Ken Loach - in making a public statement like this one, fail to register the slightest reservation about the move to get rid of presidential term limits?
Because they are either indoctrinated brainwashed morons or wily self-interested liars and fellow travelers. Or both of the above.
The same history is familiar to them. Isn't it?
No. They ignore some bits that don't fit their strange world.
