One Inch Punch Documentary - Buhooolshit.

April 7th, 2008 · 4 comments or link to (permalink)

One Inch Punch Documentary

One inch Punch is a very popular movie on YouTube with roughly the same viewership as an episode of CBS’ 60 Minutes. Its a full movie that is short enough for people with ADD and gives hope to those who have been bullied by colossal, barbeque munching, Nascar fanatics for having the withered limbs and pallid skin of a computer addict. It suggests that no matter how physically challenged you are, if you join a pseudo religion that looks like it has been created by Dungeons & Dragons characters, for Dungeons & Dragons fans - and work hard, you will be able to kick anyone’s ass.

I have chosen ‘One Inch Punch’ as representative of all martial arts movies which are supposed to be taken seriously and which seem to be another example of FEBL (Fucking Entertaining Big Lie) media. Its a succinct 7 minute piece that highlights perfectly what I have against spiritual fighting and in particular the bollocks that is called Kung Fu.

Yes, these guys are extremely fit, just as pro wrestlers look like Popeye, but that does not make Kung Fu any more real. What it does mean is that the One Inch Punch with a two foot follow through trick, can be performed by a suitably adept stuntman to make it look convincing. Add some commentary using hackneyed metaphors about ‘channeling energy’, by people who look like they can’t take a joke, to the de facto credibility of a tradition started by ancient monks and you have the makings of a proper little religion.

When it comes to religion I take the Hitchens amendment - i.e. what can be claimed without argument can be dismissed without argument. The reason martial arts can be dismissed is that they exhibit all the traits of a religion. They are a crypto-religious cultural artifact, the Eastern equivalent of fair maidens and broad-swords and traditional Western medicine such as blood sucking leeches, only interesting as fantasy or high camp slapstick.

4 comments » (report dead embeds in comments) tags: FEBL religion

Charlton Heston on the Origin of Man Part 1

April 6th, 2008 · 1 comment or link to (permalink)

Charlton Heston on the Origin of Man Part 1

Charlton Heston was simultaneously a Civil Rights activist and the head of the NRA. Confused? Well this will either help or perplex you beyond caring. Not something to sit through the whole of, but it does give some insight as to how odd Charlton Heston was.

Some fundamentalists believe that the Earth is a few thousand years old and that rocks and dinosaurs are too. This piece suggests that Charlton (what a great first name) believed that modern humans were millions of years old instead.

1 comment » (report dead embeds in comments) tags: ironic religion

Baby Bible Bashers

April 2nd, 2008 · comment or link to (permalink)

Baby Bible Bashers

When young children do very adult things like dress up in sexually suggestive clothing, for a beauty pageant, say, it brings on a particular sense of revulsion at the negation of childhood innocence because of the selfish desires of adults.

This film about child preachers has the same effect. It demonstrates by direct example what Richard Dawkins explains in prose. The fly on the wall style possibly has greater effect, since it appeals to our senses rather than just our intellect. Both methods show that to call your child an ‘Evangelical Christian’, or whatever, is no less ridiculous that calling a child a neo-Trotskyist, and therefore possibly abusive.

1 hr 2 min 41 sec Feb 25, 2008

comment » (report dead embeds in comments) tags: religion

Leaked Christiantology Video

January 25th, 2008 · 1 comment or link to (permalink)

Is Scientology really that much weirder than the Abrahamic religions? Its total membership is less than the number of people actually killed by them, so it is less dangerous by any objective measure. Its existence as an non-accepted cult, is far more short lived. Its world view is much closer to the size and age of the known universe and its threat to science seems to be tragi-comically confined to psychiatrists. But it is much weirder, right?
Wrong.
This was the most amusing preacher video I could find, to illustrate the point. It makes Tom Cruise look like Thomas Paine.

Link

1 comment » (report dead embeds in comments) tags: clips religion

Vaccination - The Hidden Truth

January 24th, 2008 · 6 comments or link to (permalink)

This terrible movie is another great example of FEBL (Fucking entertaining Big Lie) media. For some reason, in recent years a bio-luddite movement has formed against one of the greatest, proven, scientific discoveries in medicine and biggest sources of the relief of global suffering, the process of vaccination. A growing cult has chosen to identify vaccination as some kind of grandiose conspiracy and in doing so, they are engendering paranoia and endangering lives.

The format of this paranoia is very similar to both the Scientologists war on psychiatry or Evangelicals war on Darwinism. Rather like the fact that there are a small minority of biologists who believe in Intelligent Design, this documentary shows the views of some of a small minority of physicians who have problems with vaccination. There are risks with vaccination as there are with almost any medical procedure, and people who do not believe in it, but that does not mean that vaccination does not work, or that the benefits so vastly outweigh the risks that they are overwhelmingly worth it.

In the United States, the place of Tom Cruise for a war on physicians rather than psychiatrists, is taken by the quack radio host, Gary Null (who is not in this Australian documentary but is a popular anti-vaccination extremist). Null’s method is to setup vaccination as some kind of faceless government conspiracy compared with touchy feely alternative medicine, an argument which he delivers with a pleasant, soft, reassuring voice. This is an easy way to persuade people, because it is not comparing like with like.

Rather like the way that natural child birth surrounded by candles is a preferable environment to a sterile linoleum floored hospital room, but is a more dangerous one, vaccination only works if everyone does it, so vaccination tends to be delivered through the somewhat anti-septic environment of government organized vaccination programs. It is because government programs tend to be more faceless and sterile than private ones that they raise the suspicions of those who are susceptible to paranoia and equate truth with personal desirability.

The solution to damping this paranoia was spectacularly shown when we visited our pediatrician, Michel Cohen, as group of prospective parents, before our son was born. At the end of a question and answer session, one man said that he was wary of governments and therefore wary of vaccination. Dr Cohen’s answer was that although it should be the man’s choice what to ultimately do, vaccination was not so much about the individual as about the community.

By replacing society and government with ‘community’, telling the guy he had a choice and implying that lack of vaccination put the individual before the community, i.e. was selfish, Dr Cohen had pulled a Gary Null. He had expressed something in comforting terms, but this time it happened to be the truth. Brilliant, quite brilliant.

Vaccination Information Service/Taycare Pty Ltd
45 min 20 sec Jan 20, 2008
www.vaccination.inoz.com

Link

6 comments » (report dead embeds in comments) tags: FEBL religion science