Why sue a genie? He'll just conjure up a really good lawyer.

Back in my Mormon days, I believed in angels. By that I mean, I believed the stories about angels visiting Joseph Smith, and I agreed that angels could probably exist in theory somewhere. If someone claimed they'd actually seen an angel, I'd have been extremely skeptical. But they were characters in scripture, which I believed, so how skeptical could I have been.

But I never believed in genies -- that was just storybook stuff. (At the time I saw no contradiction.)

Imagine my surprise to find genies treated as real beings in the Qu'ran. And now it would appear that someone is trying to sue one.

A family in Saudi Arabia has taken a genie to court, alleging theft and harassment, according to local media.

The lawsuit filed in Shariah court accuses the genie of leaving them threatening voicemails, stealing their cell phones and hurling rocks at them when they leave their house at night, said Al-Watan newspaper.

Cell phones. Voice mail. I'm tempted to say that these people don't deserve the technology that they have. And the same goes for some Christians -- today I saw someone smear a woman with cooking oil in an attempt to convince a supernatural being to heal her. That these people can even use a phone is amazing to me.

Pre-deconversion, I'd have thought that suing an angel was crazy, so I wouldn't be surprised to hear that some Muslims think that suing a genie is equally crazy. Then again, if you think that angels and genies are real beings, it makes perfect sense to sue them like anyone else. This family's unquestioning faith in their scriptures looks like insanity. Doesn't it?

So here's an interesting continuum. On the one side are people who are rational, don't believe in supernatural beings, and live in the real world. On the other side, you have people who believe in angels and genies, and may try to sue them. They're the ones who really believe their religion, but they're (quite frankly) nuts. Someone in the middle of the continuum, like me back then, claims to believe in those things, but doesn't really. These people can exist in the real world, but that means they believe in their religion somewhat less. This suggests that one is insane to the extent that they believe in the unreal beings presupposed by their religion.

Civil disobedience of the nicest sort

A lovely bit of protest over in Salt Lake City. Two guys get charged with trespassing for a peck on the cheek in Temple Square. Next thing you know...

About 100 people gathered near the Mormon church's downtown temple to stage a "kiss-in" protesting the treatment of 2 gay men who were detained by security guards on a plaza owned by the church and later cited by police for trespassing.
...
The Salt Lake Tribune reported on its Web site that heterosexual and gay couples exchanged small kisses and pecks at the plaza's south entrance, which faces downtown. Church security was present, but the Deseret News of Salt Lake City reported on its Web site that no altercations occurred.

This takes non-violent protest to a new level -- it's anti-violent.

It's entirely fitting that this protest is happening in Salt Lake City. The search term "men kissing" is most googled in Utah, with SLC also showing a lot of curiosity. Now they get to see some for real.

Linguistics with T-pbtbhpt!-Rex

T-Rex from Dinosaur Comics shares with us some linguistic universals.


Of course, he's talking about absolute universals (like the fact that all human languages use nouns and verbs), but don't forget that there are lots of implicational universals. If a language has a word for 'blue', it will also have a word for 'red', but not the reverse. Or if a language has a word for 'toes', it'll have a word for 'legs', but not the reverse.

T-Rex would probably like to know that some languages have no word for 'fingers', since he's a bit short in that department.

Popes don't do science

Zeus, this is dumb.

Pope Benedict XVI said scientific tests confirmed shards found in the underground chamber at the church of St Paul's-Outside-the-Walls in Rome were from the apostle.
...
Pope Benedict XVI announced the findings during a service at the basilica, as Rome prepared to celebrate the Feasts of Saint Peter and Saint Paul.

"This seems to confirm the unanimous and undisputed tradition that these are the mortal remains of the Apostle Paul," he said.

And what scientific tests did they do, you ask? Oh, well, obviously they compared the DNA from the shards to another DNA sample that was known to have come from Paul... oh wait. There's your problem right there. There aren't any.

I wish the Pope would quit molesting science like it was some kind of child or something. I wish he'd just said he'd prayed about it and got the answer that way. It would still fool the believers, and it would be just as immune to critical scrutiny.

Three/four colour illusion

It's almost time to get going on my Linguistics 102 class, 'Language as Cognitive System'. It's about brain, language, and perception. What better way to start than a fascinating optical illusion. Your eyes tell you that the big swirly lines are alternately blue and green. But your eyes are mistaken. They're really the same colour. If you're not convinced, pull down the file to your desktop and zoom in on it until the context is gone and the two colours merge into one.

Our visual system -- indeed our human brains themselves -- are pretty amazing devices that work pretty well most of the time. They work by showing us a view of reality not as it is, but close enough to be useful to us. Optical illusions exploit the bugs in our system.

This has a certain degree of relevance to me right now. I'm visiting with my family. They're True Believers™, who rely on 'spiritual experiences' for evidence of their religious beliefs, which they are convinced cannot be wrong. This optical illusion is compelling evidence that our experiences, convincing though they seem, can be illusory.

Dogma keeps you in the dark

Orthodox Jews don't turn on the lights on the Sabbath. They tie it back to Exodus 35:3, which prohibits lighting fires.

But what about when a sensor turns the lights on automatically?

A couple have taken legal action after claiming motion sensors installed at their holiday flat in Dorset breached their rights as Orthodox Jews.

Gordon and Dena Coleman said they cannot leave or enter their Bournemouth flat on the Sabbath because the hallway sensors automatically switch on lights.

The couple's religious code bans lights and other electrical equipment being switched on during Jewish holidays.

They have now issued a county court writ claiming religious discrimination.

My religious background instilled in me an ability to weasel my way around arcane rules. I can think of all kinds of ways around this, and if they can't, it means they're not trying.

First, isn't there any leeway for intentionality? If you don't trigger the light on purpose, are you really turning on the light? Or how about compartmentalising? You're triggering the sensor, but it's really the sensor that's turning on the light. It's not your fault if your action instigates a chain of events that results in a light going on.

And, in my experience, religious people are really fond of attributing all technological advances to a god, as in "God made modern medicine and the Internet." Why not capitalise on that? It's not their fault that the light; it's actually God that invented the sensor that's turning the lights on. "Oh, Lord, if you do not want the lights to go on, you have the power to stop them." Guess it's okay by him.

But if they can't come up with any of these rationalisations on their own, then I say they can just sit in their flat in the dark. Perhaps they could use the time to ponder the idiocy of adopting a stupid and unworkable philosophy.

Daniel font sightings

It's fun to stay at the YMCA, but if it's the Quebec YMCA, there's an extra bonus: they use the Daniel font on their website. I think my handwriting looks quite nice in French.



If you're a fan of fantasy, you can find Yataghan on the cover of 'Fall of Thanes' by Brian Ruckley. In fact, it would appear to have been used on all three books in the "Godless World" trilogy. Now there's a title I can get behind, although I hope he doesn't mean that in a godless world there's constant combat and it's always cold.

They may be onto us already! Memorise this URL and then destroy it!

That, or hostage negotiator.

Are you thinking of going on a mission for the LDS Church? Here's an idea of what kind of job you'll be qualified for afterward.

Six days a week, in fair weather and foul, two-dozen door-to-door salesmen, all of whom live clustered together in an apartment complex in this suburb west of Chicago, pile into S.U.V.’s and cars and head into the big city, bent on sales of home security systems.

And on Sunday, their one day off, they drive together to the nearest house of worship of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The salesmen are mostly former Mormon missionaries from Utah who cut their teeth — and learned their people-skill chops — cold-calling for their faith. In Chicago and in its suburbs where their employer, Pinnacle Security of Orem, Utah, has shipped them for the summer sales season, they are doing much the same thing, but as a job.

“It’s missionary work turned into a business,” said Cameron Treu, 30, who served his mission in Chile and was recruited into D2D (that is door-to-door in sales lingo) by another former missionary.

After the mish, I never wanted to tract again. Imagine going from that to sales. At least as a missionary, I had someone else to talk to.

However, it was during the mission that I realised I liked teaching, so maybe that was one positive. There would have been better ways to go about it, though, like getting into my program and teaching as a tutor or something. An LDS mission makes a lousy gap year. Or two.

Is there an owl on the American dollar bill?

Owl-spotters: Have a look at a US simolean, and see if you can spot the owl.

I noticed this item on Tom Ellard's site, and I was intrigued. I happened to have a nice crisp US dollar bill in my possession, so I set my scanner to 'insane' setting (19200 dpi), and here's the scan. Click to enlarge.


So... is it an owl? I don't know. To me it looks like a place where a bunch of curlicues intersect. The 'head' has three holes in it, which to our human brains might look like two eyes and a nose (or beak). And maybe a couple of bumps for ears. Too bad the corresponding pattern on the other side of the bill is covered up.

What's more interesting to me is why most people who have a web page on this topic are either loopy about Masons, Jesus, or the Illuminati. I suppose if you're spending your nights looking for sinister symbolism in money, you're heading for one of two options: John Birch meetings, or muttering to yourself in bus stations. Not much difference, really.