The Eternal Gaijin

Just when I think I hit the high notes of religious doucheitude for the start of the new year, Ed Brayton discovers a new twist . And a collection of douchey things said by the great Pat Robertson . I'm thinking of buying a hermit cave and hiding there until the apocalypse, then re-emerging in a mohawk and assless chaps looking for gas in the desert.

Sigh. Sky News just had a story onthe "choking game," a new internet driven craze where school kids choke each other until unconscious, for shits and giggles. There were any number of BS markers. First, the first victim died of autoerotic asphyxiation - not really the same thing. The second victim died 16 years ago. The tone of the piece was to give the impression that millions of kids were doing this, but they only had four clips to run in the background. I smell the sweet smell of complete media bullshit scare stories. - Posted using BlogPress from my iPod

I can hardly believe how much crap gets spouted on a daily basis. We're gearing up for an election sometime before mid-May here in the UK, and as we all cynically know that will cause the bullshit-o-meter to hit the redline. Tories, Labour and Lib-Dems, Oh my! So there's only a few moments before my brain explodes talking about politics so let's skip to making fun of god-botherers for a minute. It's 2010 and the Irish have their new blasphemy law; read about it here . The War at Home: There was a big controversy last week about a group called Islam4UK wanting to make an antiwar protest through a town improbably called Wootton Bassett. Because they've got some dodgy ties, they've made inflammatory statements in the past, and they hold as a basic principle that life is not shit enough for most folks, this caused some controversy. Or con-TROV-ersy. There was a lot of back and forth in the press about whether they should be allowed to have their march. Eventually th...

Yay . Sorry. Premature . Never mind.

50 reasons why Tokyo is the greatest city in the world | CNNGo.com

Kobe as a city has a significant Christian population, largely due to its extended history of foreign settlement and trading. Over the time we lived in its burbs I found a small, but larger than expected, number of churches in our neighbourhood. We had Japanese neighbours who were various stripes of Christian and had free Japanese language copies of the Watchtower off our next-door neighbours. But a bit beyond that there were these black signs around the neighbourhood and on various walls around Kobe and Osaka. They always had some form of Bible sounding thing on them. Occasionally there was somebody with a megaphone standing outside Sannomiya or Umeda stations banging on like the rightwingers outside Yasukuni, the noise pounding out something or other about Kami-sama this and Kami-sama that. Recently there's been a trend in Japan for somebody possessed of a sense of humour and a black paint marker to make a few alterations to the signs, changing the character for God to the kataka...

Or not ... Just another great moment in Canadian relations....

What can you not prove with a little mathishness? A good question. About a month ago there was a little coverage about a pharmacy put up its online calculator that tells you the number of indirect sexual partners you've had. What is an indirect sexual partner it's someone you've not had sex with but one of your sexual partners has. Which basically is that old urban myth twaddle about you're not just sleeping with someone, you're sleeping with everyone they've ever slept with, only with a place to modify the numbers. People take some stuff really seriously. Like these guys: The Independent . The Christian Institute . This dude . And at the risk of channeling Ben Goldacre form a moment, the common factor is that they lazily breathlessly copied the press release without even so much as a challenge to the basic assumption or the execution. So let's whinge for a moment. First execution. You enter your current age, number of sexual partners and your gender. Then y...

A justice in the US regularly quizzes couples to make sure they aren’t mixed race before issuing marriage license; if they are they don’t get one. Fuckin’ fuck. In 2009 how the fuck does this happen? And in a stunning show of cognitive dissonance these two quotes : Keith Bardwell, of Tangipahoa Parish in Louisiana, denied racism but said mixed-race children were not readily accepted by their parents' communities. snip… He said: "I try to treat everyone equally." I had a great-uncle who said this sort of thing: "There is a problem with both groups accepting a child from such a marriage," he said "I think those children suffer and I won't help put them through it." I was 10 and though it was a specious argument. But he was old and from a different time…And he was a sign painter, not a fucking justice. This guy should be run out of town, but it being Louisiana he’ll end up with a memorial plaque or something.

The universe is not "fine-tuned" Not really sure what else to say about this. Clear and well presented.

That’s cause they’re different fucking words. Now get on with the vaccinations .

Nope . Continue your day.

As long as I've been reading Bad Astronomy I thought I'd seen most of the arguments against the moon landing. They're nuts but they're based on some misperceived reality. Through Steven Novella of the NESS , I learned of a whole new form of crazy: Man On The Moon–A Colossal Hoax that Cost Billions of Dollars | Hare Krishna Community Although many believe man first reached the moon in July, 1969, we have information from a very reliable source, the Sanskrit Vedic scriptures, that the astronauts never actually went to the moon. The manned moon landing was a colossal hoax. Now I know what you're thinking - that makes sense. How do we know that the books tell the truth? Because  they're perfect. And they're perfect because they tell the truth...You know the drill. And they lead to the inevitable conclusion: Despite the tremendous volume of propaganda proclaiming the “conquest of outer space,” we have information from a very reliable source, the Sanskrit Vedic sc...

Rick Mercer's rants on politics and foolishness are one of the things I miss about living overseas for most of my adult life. I'm sure they're not as good as they used to be. Nothing is. My, don't the police look young these days. But in this article he nails why Canadians are ceasing to give a shit about national level politics. Why no one wants an election - The Globe and Mail

Religiousil You may inconsistently feel the need both oppose health care reform and to berate others about charity and human decency.

It's not just some place I've been hiding for a couple of weeks while we're trying to sell the flat and move a little further into the 'burbs. No, it's also the subject of a good Radio 4 programme that's still available on iPlayer that goes a nice way to setting the record straight. BBC NEWS | UK | Bermuda Triangle plane mystery 'solved'

There is just almost nothing I can say that covers my feelings at reading these things. I don't think I can plumb the depths that this pulls the soul down to. The fact that a) someone, anyone, can defend torture b) there exists no political will to do anything about it and, not least, c) that it could happen in a modern first world democracy, such as the US just beggars belief. There are others with me on this: A reminder that torture is bad : The Uncredible Hallq What every American should be made to learn about the IG Torture Report - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com Thomas Paine v. the Right's torture defenders - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com America Lost

How about some fucking handrails here and there. Like right next to the gaping chasms you have all throughout the inside of your Death Star? Star Wars Design Flaws The new Star Trek movie, good as it was, has the same huge-drop-no-handrail problem.

This is like a catalog of unalloyed stupidity . I really couldn't want for more. HT to Dispatches .

BBC NEWS | UK | Embassies plead 'big issues only' British Embassies are pleading to Brits abroad to take them more seriously. Or at least try a tiny, tiny amount to sort their own asses out before calling the mission. The problem is Brits asking stupid, irrelevant or outrageous things of staff and calling it an emergency. When you look at the list of calls in this article remember one thing: your friendly gaijin here has heard things you people wouldn't believe. That list is the very least of the calls. They couldn't print the stupid ones because you wouldn't believe them.