Tetherd Cow Ahead

I was going to go and mow the back lawn this morning, it having grown into something of a jungle, but then I remembered that there really is no point because the world is going to end tomorrow. Yes, as I’m sure you’ve heard, September 10, 2008 is the day that the boffins throw the switch on the Large Hadron Collider, thereby creating a black hole that will expand in seconds to the size of a small planet and suck in all light and matter (including us) in the near vicinity.* ‘Near’ being a relative term, of course.

This is something of a shame, because I was really looking forward to my birthday in a couple of weeks. Amazing how much of an inconvenience a lot of nothing can be.

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*This is not really going to happen, despite the clamouring to the contrary by assorted lunatics.

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OK, in what must rank as one of the stupidest things that an Australian has said in public since John Howard announced that global warming was just fiction, Dr Mark Rose, the general manager of the Victorian Aboriginal Education Association, has told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that girls may become infertile (or worse!) if they play the didgeridoo.

The VAEA has called for the Collins-published The Daring Book for Girls to be pulped because it encourages girls to just put their lips to the didge and blow, thus demonstrating ‘an extreme cultural indiscretion’. According to (some) aboriginal beliefs, you see, the didge is strictly Men’s Business.

This great cultural respect for the didgeridoo is apparently new-found – as far as I can see, the didgeridoo hasn’t been any kind of ‘sacred instrument’ for decades. It gets played on pop songs, in film scores, by buskers (aboriginal and white alike) on street corners for money and in performances in pubs to rock arenas. Didjeridoos are sold in just about every tourist shop from here to Innamincka (and they most certainly don’t come with warning labels saying ‘Not to Be Played by Women’). No-one seems to have been overly-concerned about any of these secular appearences of the painted hollow tree branch that makes noises.

I’m all for respecting people’s cultural beliefs, but sometimes the earnestness of some folks to do so has them bending so far over backwards that their head goes straight up their arse.

And political correctness aside, Dr Rose’s declaration that:

We know very clearly that there’s a range of consequences for a female touching a didgeridoo — infertility would be the start of it, ranging to other consequences. I won’t even let my daughter touch one.

… is superstition of the highest magnitude. Who the hell ‘knows very clearly’ that a female touching a didgeridoo would be rendered infertile? There are lots of women didge players all over the world – I bet we could find at least one who’s managed to have a baby. And as for the ‘other consequences’, Dr Rose threateningly leaves dangling – well, like so much irrational belief, the vague open-endedness of that contention smacks of yet another attempt by a religion to replace reason with fear.

What century are we living in again?

Just like Jesus rolling aside the rock and walking from his tomb, it seems that the myth of the Shroud of Turin being The Son of God’s hunky-dory, true-blue winding sheet has risen once more from its grave. People, please, this one’s BUSTED! Carbon dating of the shroud, something for which the Shroudies were clamouring for decades, has placed the fabric unequivocally around 1260 – 1390 AD, a period that coincides with an artist’s confession of having forged the image as part of a faith-healing scheme (this admission is recorded in the Catholic Church’s own documents). Since relics of this kind were not at all uncommon at that time in history, it’s not remotely surprising that the science places the shroud there. Indeed, if you accept that the Bible is telling the truth, then it also contradicts the appearance of the shroud: John 19:40 claims that Jesus was wrapped in strips of linen rather than a whole sheet. John also says that the body had been anointed with large quantities of aloes and myrrh, no single trace of which has ever been found in the Turin Shroud.*

Unsurprisingly, no matter how much scientific and logical illumination is brought to bear on the shroud, there are still people who, for reasons that are impossible to fathom†, cling to the belief that the Shroud of Turin just has to be the genuine burial cloth of Jesus Christ.

Enter John and Rebecca Jackson who have somehow convinced Oxford University to re-examine the carbon-dating data from the 1988 test. Among other things they assert that the major portion of the cloth scrutinized at that time was not from the ‘original’ shroud, but from Medieval repairs made in the 14th century. Of course.

In an effort to aid their new investigations, John and Rebecca have enlisted the help of a styrofoam dummy they have dubbed ‘Roger’, who serves as a stand-in for Jesus. Roger, wrapped in a cloth similar to the shroud, is, I gather, supposed to help the Jacksons understand how bloodstains might have behaved on a real body prepared in this manner. It seems to me that Roger also makes for good photographic copy; a physical form that can be offered up in ‘evidence’ by the indiscriminating news purveyors, for a body that was never there. After all, the shroud image has been so widely propagated that it does have a certain ho-hum factor. It’s even made appearances on t-shirts.

Since Roger has now become a surrogate Christ, I propose that we start up a new religious movement that is based on actual concrete (well, polystyrene, anyway) evidence! Rogerism! Henceforth, Roger is inducted into Sainthood in The Church of The Tetherd Cow, to sit proudly at The Cow’s Right Hoof and dispense his foam-packing-nuggets of wisdom to all who seek.

Well, it makes at least as much sense as this person, who attempts to draw comparisons between the Face on the Turin Shroud and the Cydonia ‘Face’ on Mars, for reasons that I can’t even begin to fathom.

I’ll leave you to reflect on the astonishing similarity:

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*Joe Nickell ‘Inquest on the Shroud of Turin’ (Prometheus 1998)

†As I’ve said before on The Cow: this desperate need for proof of Christ’s divinity would apparently demonstrate an absence of Faith. And unless I’m wrong, that’s the whole point of accepting the Word of God at face value. I await, as always, any correction of my misunderstanding on this matter.

Thanks to Pil for the heads-up on Woger!

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Reuters reports that Catholics on the Adriatic Coast in Italy are attempting to bring religion to beachgoing holidaymakers by using an inflatable church. Sunbathers can queue up to have their confession heard, and enjoy a five person choir singing hymns in the blow-up basilica.

Oh yeah! Now why don’t they bring that to a beach here somewhere? I’ve been itching for a chance to try out my new crossbow.

It hasn’t been all wine & crackers with the air-filled abbey though. The first attempt to launch it in Sardinia last month was aborted due to strong winds. Now really, if ever there was a Sign…

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Thanks to Kirke for this tidbit.

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Sometimes the level of idiocy in the world just brings me to a screeching stop. Atlas Cerise draws The Cow’s attention to this story hot off the Associated Press about an ‘activist’ prayer group in St Louis the US who have decided that the most productive method for getting petrol prices down is to pray to God to lower them. What’s more, because there has been some easing on the $US4-per-gallon prices over the last week, these feebleminded halfwits think that their prayers are actually working.

Now how many levels of stupid does this idea contain? I think I’ll go stick my finger in an electric pencil sharpener.

I keep promising to turn the scathing bovine eye of The Cow onto Scientology at some point but whenever attempt to pick up my quill on that particular subject my brain just turns to custard. It should be just like shooting fish in a barrel, but heck, it’s such a small barrel and there are so many big fish and if I wanted to do something futile and time-wasting I could just go play another level of BioShock and have a LOT more fun …

Anyways, Atlas Cerise brings my attention to this story in the Guardian about some recent antics involving the Church* of Scientology. To synopsize: a young man picketing the CoS headquarters in London as part of a peaceful demonstration by the anti-Scientology group Anonymous was arrested and is facing prosecution for calling Scientology a ‘cult’.

Let me make it quite clear what’s happening here, because it’s way more scary than the usual dumbo stuff that the Scientologists themselves manage to concoct: the CoS itself is not bringing this accusation against the teenager responsible; it’s the City of London Police who have charged the boy. He was told by an officer that the word ‘cult’ was ‘abusive and insulting’ and that he could not carry a placard which read ‘Scientology is not a religion, it is a dangerous cult.’

This is how the Ask Oxford online dictionary defines the word ‘cult’:

cult • noun 1 a system of religious worship directed towards a particular figure or object. 2 a small religious group regarded as strange or as imposing excessive control over members. 3 something popular or fashionable among a particular section of society.

Hands up who thinks the Bill are going to pull this one off?

What’s deeply worrying is that the best proper accusation that the UK Law can bring against this boy would appear to be that he was airing an opinion. If that kind of thing is encouraged, then Scientologists and all the other loonies like them will get a free ticket to legitimacy.

If you’re not scared about that, you should be.

UPDATE: Well, I don’t know why it surprises me to find out† that, in fact, it seems that the CoS was involved in the above incident. Not directly, but certainly implicitly. It turns out that for some time now the City of London Police have been, shall we say, receptive to offers of entertainment and donations from L. Ron’s flock. It appears that the laws under which the young man I mentioned above were detained are almost never actually acted upon, except, perhaps when you have friends in the right places.

Let there be no mistake: Dotty belief combined with money & influence always equals setbacks for the human species. Just look at the havoc the Catholic Church has managed in its time.

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*Even though I am in no way religiously inclined, something really grates on me having to refer to these loons as a ‘church’. They are no more a church than the entire fandom of Dungeons & Dragons is a church, only a lot less rooted in reality.

†Thanks to the Skeptical Rogues.

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