Q.R.T.: Quick Random Thought

Do you think the people who sell their gold for cash use that cash to buy more snuggies?

Sphere: Related Content

The Ol' High School Making Headlines

it's always a treat to see your high school alma mater on the main page of the L.A. Times as the subject and focus of one of the most viewed stories. Just wish it had a better headline (though I guess it's better than this one) (or this one...wow) WTF HW?

Cheating scandal roils elite Harvard Westlake school

Six students are expelled and others face suspension after midterm tests are stolen and passed around.

Six sophomores were expelled and more than a dozen other students faced suspensions Tuesday in a cheating scandal that has rocked Harvard-Westlake, a top-tier Los Angeles private school with a national reputation for its academics.

Administrators said students conspired to steal Spanish and history tests by distracting teachers in their classrooms. The tests were then shown to several other students before midterm exams last month, said Harvard-Westlake President Thomas Hudnut.

The history department had become suspicious about the world and Europe II exams when several students scored exceptionally well. Then on Feb. 8, the department received an anonymous tip that cheating had occurred. Based on that report, several students were called to the dean's office and accused of being involved, while others came forward to confess, Hudnut said.

The six students accused of stealing the exams will not be allowed to return to the school. Students accused of viewing advance copies of the Spanish III and world history tests were suspended for varying lengths of time, Hudnut said.

Administrators announced the outcome of a nearly three-weeks-long investigation by the school's honor board -- composed of students and faculty -- at an assembly Tuesday at Harvard-Westlake's North Hollywood campus, which serves 10th through 12th graders. The honor board issued expulsions in part because the acts were premeditated, Hudnut said.

Hudnut, who previously was headmaster, said the incident was an unprecedented "breach of trust" at a school that perennially produces among the nation's top SAT and Advanced Placement scores and numerous National Merit semifinalists.

"I've been at the school for 21 years and I have never heard of an exam or test being" stolen, said Hudnut, who was in New York attending a conference. "This is an aberration and as a result, an honor board made up of students and faculty wanted to respond very forthrightly to it because something like this has to be addressed and dealt with."

Hudnut said it was unlikely that the students in those classes would be required to retake the exams, since most students did not cheat. Those who admitted viewing the tests, however, will probably have their grades adjusted. Teachers and deans will hold several forums for students to discuss the school's honor code, which every student must sign.

The cheating scandal has provoked a wave of self-reflection at the closely knit campus, where about 870 students are enrolled. An additional 730 students attend the middle school in Holmby Hills. Harvard-Westlake's annual tuition is $25,000.

Earlier this month, six middle school students were expelled for violations related to drug possession. Those students would be allowed to reapply, but admission was not guaranteed, Hudnut said.

An opinion posted to the online blog of the Chronicle, Harvard-Westlake's campus newspaper, referred to the school's reputation for "superior academics" and said the cheating incident had "tainted the most precious and valued aspect of the school."

"Walking through the lunch area, one is inundated with speculation as to who will not be returning to the Harvard-Westlake community," wrote senior Michael Kaplan. "In classes, teachers have questioned outright whether there is an actual community anymore. At a school where students leave their backpacks strewn across the school, teachers now feel the need to lock their offices and question every piece of 'original' work."

According to a national survey of high school students by the Los Angeles-based Josephson Institute of Ethics, young people display deeply entrenched habits of dishonesty. The 2006 Report Card on the Ethics of American Youth, a biennial national survey, found high rates of cheating, lying and theft. In that report, 60% of students said they had cheated on a test, and one in three used the Internet to plagiarize an assignment.

Hudnut conceded that the incident probably would harm relationships between some students and teachers on the campus, at least initially.

"I think, in all honesty, something like this can sow some seeds of doubt," he said. "But after a tentative period in which teachers and faculty assess the recent actions things will actually not only return to status quo but [the incident will] serve to forge closer bonds."

Mr. Hudnut is now President of the school? Sounds way too official and corporate and business like. Headmaster was far more chummy and charming.
I wonder who snitched, but those kids if they were so smart they wouldn't have gotten caught; back in my day...

Sphere: Related Content

Florida is the new Mississippi

A backward ass state which terrifies me with it’s continuing violence crueltry and bigotry…and that’s in the supposed “progressive liberal” part not even the Panhandle hick zone
First (withing the past few weeks- Florida's missteps go far into the past) evolution is declared a “theory” then the tragic death of Simmie Williams and now another tale of gay bashing from Fort Lauderdale, a city that when I visited seemed incredibly open and gay friendly
from Towleroad

Police are searching for a man driven by hate, who beat a gay man and threatened him and his partner, after they finished a meal at an outdoor restaurant.

The couple were dining at the Floridian restaurant on Las Olas Boulevard with a friend around 3 a.m. Saturday when they say a stranger verbally and physically attacked them. "I can barely see out of my right eye at this point, I got scrapes..." said Melbourne Brunner.

Brunner said he received the injuries from the stranger who walked by their table and targeted him for no other reason besides the fact that he is a gay man. Brunner said they tried to be cordial with the stranger when they first made eye contact. "He looked down at us, and my partner said, 'Good morning,' and that was it."

Brunner recalled, moments later, the man returned visibly upset. "He just started with this barrage, of, 'Are you looking at me, you faggot? You know what I do to faggots? I break their necks!'"

After the verbal encounter, his partner and friend decided to ask for their check. They got up, left the restaurant and headed down the sidewalk to their car. That's when the attacker followed them and made his move. "As I was almost into the car, the guy had made it down the sidewalk and had reached inside and grabbed the edge of the door," explained Brunner. The verbal attack turned physical when Brunner stood up. "That's when he hit me, and I landed face-down on the concrete."

Mitchell Mart, the victim's partner, went to render aid to Brunner and noticed his injuries. "I came down the street to pick him up and put him in the car and saw he was badly injured," Mart said. "His forehead immediately swelled up, his eye closed, he was bleeding."

Mart tried to get the attacker's license tag number from his pickup truck, but the assailant went out of his way to keep it hidden. "He took off his shirt, covered his license plate, put down his tailgate," he said.

Brunner said the attacker then threatened them. "'I'll kill you before you get my tag number, you faggot!' and jumped in his car, rolled down the window and was screaming, 'That's right, run, faggots, run.'"

Despite the attacker's attempts to keep his identity hidden, the victims did give a detailed description to police. Authorities are looking for a newer model, four-door Toyota Tacoma with a metallic green color, chrome rims, a black roll bar and a black bed cover. The attacker is described as a white male, in his early 30s, with a muscular build, clean-cut hair, standing about 5 feet 9 inches to 6 feet tall.

Mart's eyes well up with tears, as he relives the traumatizing experience. "This has taken a really nice, beautiful and peaceful town that we have and turned it into a nightmare, and we can't go out and have a good time," he said as he chocked back his tears.

there aren't words.

Sphere: Related Content

Nicorette Makes You Crazy And Evil

Smoking may blacken your lungs and kill you but if the alternative is being addicted to the same thing that Ann Coulter is, that she chomps on as if they were the bones of “unperfected” jewish children, that I assume contributes to her craziness, well... where are my Capris?

Other highlights of anchors “off air” through Harry Shearer’s Found Object
Hannah storm lecturing some CBS morning show guy who doesn’t really “get” Joe Montana
Bill O’Reilly, looking more and more like an actual demon berating someone named Dave. What a struggle indeed
Chris “here’s my hotel key, Barack” Matthews with his ever present smirk

(from Best Week Ever)

Sphere: Related Content

I Don't Think I Can Help, Mrs. Bruce

an e-mail that somehow got past my g-mail spam filter
From Mrs Jenifer Bruce
N [38 Rue Des Martyrs Cocody
Abidjan,Cote d'Ivoire


ATTN:
DEAREST ONE OF GOD
I am the above named person from Kuwait. I am married to Mr.Abram Bruce, who worked with Kuwait embassy in Ivory Coast for nine years before he died in the year 2004. We were married for eleven years without a child. He died after a brief illness that lasted for only four days.

Before his death we were both born again Christian. Since his death I decided not to remarry or get a child outside my matrimonial home which the Bible is against. When my late husband was alive he deposited the sum of $2. 5 Million (Two Million Five Hundred U.S. Dollars) in the bank here in Abidjan in suspense account.

Presently, the fund is still with the bank. Recently, my Doctor told me that i have serious sickness which is cancer problem. The one that disturbs me most is my stroke sickness. Having known my condition I decided to donate this fund to a church or individual that will utilize this money the way I am going to instruct herein. I want a church that will use this fund for orphanages, widows, propagating the word of God and to endeavour that the house of God is maintained.

The Bible made us to understand that blessed is the hand that giveth. I took this decision because I don’t have any child that will inherit this money and my husband relatives are not Christians and I don’t want my husband’s efforts to be used by unbelievers. I don’t want a situation where this money will be used in an ungodly way. This is why I am taking this decision. I am not afraid of death hence i know where I am going. I know that I am going to be in the bosom of the Lord. Exodus 14 VS 14 says that the Lord will fight my case and I shall hold my peace.

I don’t need any telephone communication in this regard because of my health hence the presence of my husband’s relatives is around me always I don't want them to know about this development. With God all things are possible. As soon as I receive your reply I shall give you the contact of the bank here in Abidjan. I want you and the church to always pray for me because the Lord is my shepherd. My happiness is that I lived a life of a worthy Christian. Whoever that wants to serve the Lord must serve him in spirit and Truth. Please always be prayerful all through your life.

Contact me on the above e-mail address for more information’s, any delay in your reply will give me room in sourcing another church or individual for this same purpose. Please assure me that you will act accordingly as I Stated herein. Hoping to receive your
reply.
Remain blessed in the Lord.
Yours in Christ,
Mrs Jenifer Bruce

Sphere: Related Content

The Heterosexual Agenda

I'm sure this Loudon parent is an absolute gem

A children's book about two male penguins that hatch and parent a chick was pulled from library shelves in Loudoun County elementary schools this month after a parent complained that it promoted a gay agenda.

The book is based "on a true story . . . of what happens in the animal kingdom," said David Weintraub, director of Equality Loudoun, a gay rights organization. "It's about the joy of being part of a family. These penguins love each other. They take care of each other."

The book, "And Tango Makes Three," by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell, draws on the real-life story of Roy and Silo, two chinstrap penguins at the Central Park Zoo in New York. It also appears to make a point about tolerance of alternative families.

The publisher, Simon & Schuster, offers discussion questions about the book on a Web site. One says: "Tango has two fathers instead of the traditional mother and father. Do you have a nontraditional family, or do you know someone who does?"

As the book says, Roy and Silo were "a little bit different" than the boy and girl penguins who noticed each other and became couples. "Wherever Roy went, Silo went too." After they tried to hatch an egg-shaped rock together, a zookeeper gave them a fertilized egg to nurture. Experts say male chinstraps typically share incubation duties with females.

The 2005 book, written with simple words and colorful pictures and dedicated "to penguin lovers everywhere," topped the American Library Association's list of banned or challenged books in 2006. Parents challenged the book in Shiloh, Ill., and Charlotte. Administrators in Charlotte initially yanked the book but later restored it, according to news reports.

In Loudoun, the book was challenged at Sugarland Elementary School several months ago, officials said, by a parent they declined to name.

Following school system policy, the principal convened an advisory committee of principals, librarians, teachers and parents to review the book. The group deemed it acceptable, and the principal concurred. The parent appealed. Another committee of administrators, librarians and parents reviewed the book. That committee, too, recommended that it remain in the collection.

Hatrick made the final call. Wayde B. Byard, a schools spokesman, said Friday that Hatrick made a "split decision." Although "Tango" was pulled from the shelves, it will remain in the librarian's collection. At 16 elementary schools, the book is now part of the professional collection, where it is stored with instructional texts and can be checked out only by parents or teachers.

"If you are putting something behind a desk, you are saying something is wrong with it," said Judith Krug, director of the office for intellectual freedom at the American Library Association. "It's a degree of censorship, because they are making access to information extremely difficult."

George said that the book helps teach a lesson that she wants her children to know: There are all types of families.

"We happen to be a mom and dad and a boy and a girl," she said. "But sometimes you have a grandmother and a mother, sometimes you have just a dad, sometimes you have two moms or two dads. The important thing is that it's a family of love."

Some parents and activists want to challenge Hatrick's decision and put the book back on shelves, but school system officials say there is no process to do that.

John Stevens, a school board member from Potomac, criticized those policies.

Stevens wrote that parents should determine what is appropriate for their children. "The school should not be an instrument of censorship for parents who want veto power over the judgment of other parents," he wrote.

What’s so bad about peace love and understanding? I'm sure Roy and Silo are better parents than whoever gets this worked up about penguins. And really don’t these kinds of hyper nutty parents realize their pushing a heteronormative agenda? Of course they don’t- every book should be about two parent families, one husband and one wife and for all of us who don’t think that’s ideal or who weren’t raised that way, we’ll our opinions can always be vetoed.

Plus it’s not like “And Tango Makes Three” was like any of these other books not likely to be in your local school library




and my absolute favorite


In real life Roy and Silo are now broken up...another tragic broken home

Sphere: Related Content

In Honor of Marti Coley

a Florida state representative who said "There are many unanswered questions about the origin of life," and so wants push a bill that would require evolution be taught as a "theory" and who helped Florida embarrass itself again here is from The List Universe the Top 15 Misconceptions about Evolution:

15. Evolution is a theory about the origin of life

The theory of evolution primarily deals with the manner in which life has changed after its origin. While science is interested in the origins of life (for example the composition of the primeval sludge from which life might have come) but these are not issues covered in the area of evolution. What is known is that regardless of the start, at some point life began to branch off. Evolution is, therefore, dedicated to the study of those processes.

14. Organisms are always getting better

While it is a fact that natural selection weeds out unhealthy genes from the gene pool, there are many cases where an imperfect organism has survived. Some examples of this are fungi, sharks, crayfish, and mosses - these have all remained essentially the same over a great period of time. These organisms are all sufficiently adapted to their environment to survive without improvement.

Other taxa have changed a lot, but not necessarily for the better. Some creatures have had their environments changed and their adaptations may not be as well suited to their new situation. Fitness is linked to their environment, not to progress.

13. Evolution means that life changed ‘by chance’

In fact, natural selection is not random. Many aquatic animals need speed to survive and reproduce - the creatures with that ability are more suited to their environment and are more likely to survive natural selection. In turn, they will produce more offspring with the same traits and the cycle continues. The idea that evolution occurs by chance does not take the entire picture in to account.

12. Natural selection involves organisms ‘trying’ to adapt

Organisms do not “try” to adapt - it is natural selection that enables various members of a group to survive and reproduce. Genetic adaptation is entirely outside of the power of the developing organism.

11. Natural selection gives organisms what they ‘need.’

Natural selection has no “intelligence” - it can not tell what a species needs. If a population has genetic variants that are more suited to their environment, they will reproduce more in the next generation and the population will evolve. If a genetic variant is not present, the population will most likely do - or it will survive with little evolutionary change.

10. Evolution is ‘just’ a theory

Scientifically speaking, a theory is a well substantiated idea that explains aspects of the natural world. Unfortunately other definitions of theory (such as a “guess” or a “hunch”) cause a great deal of confusion in the non-scientific world when dealing with the sciences. They are, in fact, two very different concepts.

9. Evolution is a Theory in Crisis

There is no debate in science as to whether or not evolution occurred - there is, however, debate over how it happened. The minutiae of the process is vigorously debated which can cause anti-evolutionists to believe that the theory is in crisis. Evolution is sound science and is treated as such by scientists worldwide.

8. Gaps in the Fossil Record Disprove Evolution

Actually, many transitional fossils do exist - for example, there are fossils of transitional organisms between modern birds and their dinosaur ancestors, as well as whales and their land mammal ancestors. There are many transitional forms that have not been preserved, but that is simply because some organisms do not fossilize well or exist in conditions that do not allow for the process of fossilization. Science predicts that there will be gaps in the record for many evolutionary changes. This does not disprove the theory.

7. Evolutionary Theory is Incomplete

Evolutionary science is a work in progress. Science is constantly making new discoveries with regard to it and explanations are always adjusted if necessary. Evolutionary theory is like all of the other sciences in this respect. Science is always trying to improve our knowledge. At present, evolution is the only well-supported explanation for all of life’s diversity.

6. The Theory is Flawed

Science is an extremely competitive field - if any flaws were discovered in evolutionary theory they would be quickly corrected. All of the alleged flaws that creationists put forth have been investigated careful by scientists and they simply do not hold water. They are usually based on misunderstandings of the theory or misrepresentation of the evidence.

5. Evolution is not science because it is not observable

Evolution is observable and testable. The confusion here is that people think science is limited to experiments in laboratories by white-coated technicians. In fact, a large amount of scientific information is gathered from the real world. Astronomers can obviously not physically touch the objects they study (for example stars and galaxies), yet a great deal of knowledge can be gained through multiple lines of study. This is true also of evolution. It is also true that there are many mechanisms of evolution that can be, and are studied through direct experimentation as with other sciences.

4. Most Biologists have rejected Darwinism

Scientists do not reject Darwin’s theories, they have modified it over time as more knowledge has been discovered. Darwin considered that evolution proceeds at a deliberate, slow pace - but in fact it has now been discovered that it can proceed at a rapid pace under some circumstances. There has not been, so far, a credible challenge to the basic principles of Darwin’s theory. Scientists have improved and expanded on Darwin’s original theory of natural selection - it has not been rejected, it has been added to.

3. Evolution Leads to Immoral Behavior

All animal species have a set of behaviors that they share with other members of their species. Slugs act like slugs, dogs act like dogs, and humans act like humans. It is preposterous to presume that a child will begin to behave like another creature when they discover that they are related to them. It is nonsensical to link evolution to immoral or inappropriate behavior.

2. Evolution Supports “Might Makes Right”

In the 19th and early 20th century, a philosophy called “Social Darwinism” sprung up from misguided attempts to apply biological evolution to society. This philosophy said that society should allow the weak to fail and die, and that not only is this an ideal situation, but a morally right one. This enabled prejudices to be rationalized and ideas such as the poor deserved their situation due to being less fit were very popular. This was a misappropriation of science. Social Darwinism has, thankfully, been repudiated. Biological evolution has not.

1. Teachers Should Teach Both Sides

There are tens of thousands of different religious views concerning creation. It is simply impossible for all of these views to be presented. Furthermore, none of the theories are based in science and therefore have no place in a science classroom. In a science class, students can debate where a creature branched off in the tree of life, but it is not right to argue a religious belief in a science class. The “fairness” argument is often used by groups attempting to inject their religious dogmas in to the scientific curricula.

Sphere: Related Content

Cut Off Florida

Florida is totally America’s wang

From USA Today comes the latest chapter in ongoing embarrassment that is the state that brought us bush

Fla. educators to teach evolution as theory, not settled fact

Students in Florida must be taught that evolution is a theory and not a settled fact, according to standards that the State Board of Education just approved in Tallahasee.

"A panel of 68 experts, heavy with science teachers and scientists, drew up detailed, age-specific standards that described evolution as the basic 'concept underlying all of biology.' The standards said evolution was supported by 'multiple forms of scientific evidence,'" The News-Press, a fellow Gannett paper, says. "In a series of public hearings, several conservative religious leaders and parents objected to evolution being 'the' accepted standard. The compromise language approved today cites 'the scientific theory of evolution,' making it officially a theory rather than a settled fact."

The Palm Beach Post story

Science teachers in Florida public schools will be required to teach evolution for the first time after the state Board of Education agreed to adopt new curriculum standards this morning by a 4-3 vote.

The divided vote came as board members argued over an eleventh-hour amendment that requires the standards to refer to the "scientific theory of evolution" instead of "evolution.

The amendment, which supporters refer to as the "academic freedom proposal," was unveiled late Friday. Education Commissioner Eric Smith recommended the amendment, which won praise from religious groups and conservative lawmakers.

Board members Linda Taylor, T. Willard Fair, Kathleen Shanahan and Phoebe Raulerson approved the new standards with the amendment. Member Roberto Martinez, Akshay Desai and Donna Callaway opposed the change.

The state board spent a year deliberating the first changes at five public hearings around the state before the meeting this morning in the state Capitol.

The changes were hailed as a victory by parents, educators and lawmakers who insisted that evolution was far from an iron-clad fact and deserved critical analyses in the classroom.

"There are many unanswered questions about the origin of life," said state Rep. Marti Coley, a Marianna Republican who said last week she would push a bill that would require evolution be taught as a "theory."

A year debating and this is the compromise?
Like there are no questions about creationism? Here’s one- if G*d existed before all creation in the void where did G*d come from- who created her?
What questions are left about evolution? Doesn’t she watch the Simpsons?

Questions solved.

If Florida is America’s wang then it’s about time to
Give America a penectomy

Just snip snip chop and let it float away...

Sphere: Related Content

Coach K Sued!

and with just cause I must say. I'm certain Mike Nifong would take this case, if he could.

Filed in the US District Court Western District of Virginia at Roanoke
Jonathan Lee Riches; John Chaney
Plaintiff’s
V
Mike Krzyzewski
Duke Blue Devils Basketball team
Defendants

I have no pillow and a hard mattress in solitary so my neck hurts and defendants won’t help me with my back pain; this is a civil rights violation. I seek $13.7 million and a blanket cause I’m freezing
Temporary restraining order
Respectfully submitted- Jonathan Lee Riches

Hmm, John Chaney's been getting into trouble since he retired.
But it's seriously good to know that UNC grads are out there, exercising their constitutional rights and can mail a letter.

You can read and see the pdf file here.
from Duke Basketball Report
(and is it screwed up that this guy can spell K's last name better than I can?)

[UPDATE- and it seems like our Johnny Lee Riches is quite infamous. And clever..or crazy.Probably crazy; naughty boy forgot his meds]

Sphere: Related Content

America: Land of The Dumb and Home of The Unconcerned

Carl: Let's make litter out of these literati!
Lenny: That's too clever, you're one of THEM!
-They Saved Lisa's Brain

there's been a recent spate of op/ed in our nation's major newspapers recently about how just dumb Americans are (and of course by spate I mean there was a piece in the New York Times) and I must say it's about time people understand that we're all American idiots. The most recent example of this intellectual counterattack comes from the Washington Post and an opinion piece called The Dumbing of America and though it is somewhat ironic that the people who would read op/eds in like the Times of the Post aren't really the dumb ones that the articles speak about and need to be informed of their own ignorance, and in fact it could be considered to be a bit of intellectual class sneering down upon the great teeming reality show watching masses, BUT they deserve it; I mean 1 in 5 American adults think that the Sun revolves around the Earth! Galileo almost died for your sins people!

And on to the piece

"The mind of this country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself." Ralph Waldo Emerson offered that observation in 1837, but his words echo with painful prescience in today's very different United States. Americans are in serious intellectual trouble -- in danger of losing our hard-won cultural capital to a virulent mixture of anti-intellectualism, anti-rationalism and low expectations.

This is the last subject that any candidate would dare raise on the long and winding road to the White House. It is almost impossible to talk about the manner in which public ignorance contributes to grave national problems without being labeled an "elitist," one of the most powerful pejoratives that can be applied to anyone aspiring to high office. Instead, our politicians repeatedly assure Americans that they are just "folks," a patronizing term that you will search for in vain in important presidential speeches before 1980. (Just imagine: "We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain . . . and that government of the folks, by the folks, for the folks, shall not perish from the earth.") Such exaltations of ordinariness are among the distinguishing traits of anti-intellectualism in any era.

The classic work on this subject by Columbia University historian Richard Hofstadter, "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life," was published in early 1963, between the anti-communist crusades of the McCarthy era and the social convulsions of the late 1960s. Hofstadter saw American anti-intellectualism as a basically cyclical phenomenon that often manifested itself as the dark side of the country's democratic impulses in religion and education. But today's brand of anti-intellectualism is less a cycle than a flood. If Hofstadter (who died of leukemia in 1970 at age 54) had lived long enough to write a modern-day sequel, he would have found that our era of 24/7 infotainment has outstripped his most apocalyptic predictions about the future of American culture.

Dumbness, to paraphrase the late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, has been steadily defined downward for several decades, by a combination of heretofore irresistible forces. These include the triumph of video culture over print culture (and by video, I mean every form of digital media, as well as older electronic ones); a disjunction between Americans' rising level of formal education and their shaky grasp of basic geography, science and history; and the fusion of anti-rationalism with anti-intellectualism.

First and foremost among the vectors of the new anti-intellectualism is video. The decline of book, newspaper and magazine reading is by now an old story. The drop-off is most pronounced among the young, but it continues to accelerate and afflict Americans of all ages and education levels.

Reading has declined not only among the poorly educated, according to a report last year by the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1982, 82 percent of college graduates read novels or poems for pleasure; two decades later, only 67 percent did. And more than 40 percent of Americans under 44 did not read a single book -- fiction or nonfiction -- over the course of a year. The proportion of 17-year-olds who read nothing (unless required to do so for school) more than doubled between 1984 and 2004. This time period, of course, encompasses the rise of personal computers, Web surfing and video games.

Does all this matter? Technophiles pooh-pooh jeremiads about the end of print culture as the navel-gazing of (what else?) elitists. In his book "Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter," the science writer Steven Johnson assures us that we have nothing to worry about. Sure, parents may see their "vibrant and active children gazing silently, mouths agape, at the screen." But these zombie-like characteristics "are not signs of mental atrophy. They're signs of focus." Balderdash. The real question is what toddlers are screening out, not what they are focusing on, while they sit mesmerized by videos they have seen dozens of times.

Despite an aggressive marketing campaign aimed at encouraging babies as young as 6 months to watch videos, there is no evidence that focusing on a screen is anything but bad for infants and toddlers. In a study released last August, University of Washington researchers found that babies between 8 and 16 months recognized an average of six to eight fewer words for every hour spent watching videos.

I cannot prove that reading for hours in a treehouse (which is what I was doing when I was 13) creates more informed citizens than hammering away at a Microsoft Xbox or obsessing about Facebook profiles. But the inability to concentrate for long periods of time -- as distinct from brief reading hits for information on the Web -- seems to me intimately related to the inability of the public to remember even recent news events. It is not surprising, for example, that less has been heard from the presidential candidates about the Iraq war in the later stages of the primary campaign than in the earlier ones, simply because there have been fewer video reports of violence in Iraq. Candidates, like voters, emphasize the latest news, not necessarily the most important news.

No wonder negative political ads work. "With text, it is even easy to keep track of differing levels of authority behind different pieces of information," the cultural critic Caleb Crain noted recently in the New Yorker. "A comparison of two video reports, on the other hand, is cumbersome. Forced to choose between conflicting stories on television, the viewer falls back on hunches, or on what he believed before he started watching."

As video consumers become progressively more impatient with the process of acquiring information through written language, all politicians find themselves under great pressure to deliver their messages as quickly as possible -- and quickness today is much quicker than it used to be. Harvard University's Kiku Adatto found that between 1968 and 1988, the average sound bite on the news for a presidential candidate -- featuring the candidate's own voice -- dropped from 42.3 seconds to 9.8 seconds. By 2000, according to another Harvard study, the daily candidate bite was down to just 7.8 seconds.

The shrinking public attention span fostered by video is closely tied to the second important anti-intellectual force in American culture: the erosion of general knowledge.

People accustomed to hearing their president explain complicated policy choices by snapping "I'm the decider" may find it almost impossible to imagine the pains that Franklin D. Roosevelt took, in the grim months after Pearl Harbor, to explain why U.S. armed forces were suffering one defeat after another in the Pacific. In February 1942, Roosevelt urged Americans to spread out a map during his radio "fireside chat" so that they might better understand the geography of battle. In stores throughout the country, maps sold out; about 80 percent of American adults tuned in to hear the president. FDR had told his speechwriters that he was certain that if Americans understood the immensity of the distances over which supplies had to travel to the armed forces, "they can take any kind of bad news right on the chin."

This is a portrait not only of a different presidency and president but also of a different country and citizenry, one that lacked access to satellite-enhanced Google maps but was far more receptive to learning and complexity than today's public. According to a 2006 survey by National Geographic-Roper, nearly half of Americans between ages 18 and 24 do not think it necessary to know the location of other countries in which important news is being made. More than a third consider it "not at all important" to know a foreign language, and only 14 percent consider it "very important."

That leads us to the third and final factor behind the new American dumbness: not lack of knowledge per se but arrogance about that lack of knowledge. The problem is not just the things we do not know (consider the one in five American adults who, according to the National Science Foundation, thinks the sun revolves around the Earth); it's the alarming number of Americans who have smugly concluded that they do not need to know such things in the first place. Call this anti-rationalism -- a syndrome that is particularly dangerous to our public institutions and discourse. Not knowing a foreign language or the location of an important country is a manifestation of ignorance; denying that such knowledge matters is pure anti-rationalism. The toxic brew of anti-rationalism and ignorance hurts discussions of U.S. public policy on topics from health care to taxation.

There is no quick cure for this epidemic of arrogant anti-rationalism and anti-intellectualism; rote efforts to raise standardized test scores by stuffing students with specific answers to specific questions on specific tests will not do the job. Moreover, the people who exemplify the problem are usually oblivious to it. ("Hardly anyone believes himself to be against thought and culture," Hofstadter noted.) It is past time for a serious national discussion about whether, as a nation, we truly value intellect and rationality. If this indeed turns out to be a "change election," the low level of discourse in a country with a mind taught to aim at low objects ought to be the first item on the change agenda.

We're still in Iraq? How bizarre

(and no I don't buy Jimmy Wales' counterpoint in the same paper, which seems to be based on the whole premise that "we're smarter than you think- look at Wikipedia!" what he feels to mention is that Truthiness has a longer entry than Lutherans, PTI running gags has a longer entry than Meet the Press and on and on. Has he never wikigroaned? Sure there are always going to be some smart people but measuring "intelligence" by how pop culturally aware/obsessive certain people are is not the way to make an argument. I mean my governor, the governor of like the 6th biggest economy of the world is Arnold Schwarzenegger!

(and once again I would highly recommend Idiocracy-

that's where we're headed)

Sphere: Related Content

Nation Of Andorra Not In Africa, Shocked U.S. State Dept. Reports

The United States gave billions of dollars in aid to the wealthy European principality of Andorra, which it mistakenly assumed was a poor African country.
Everyone makes mistakes,right?

Nation Of Andorra Not In Africa, Shocked U.S. State Dept. Reports

such a shame too; Georgie was looking forward to visiting it after he swung through Mumbambu...

To be honest, not sure I'd actually ever heard of Andorra either, though apparently it has the highest life expectancy at about 85 years, its motto is "Strength United is Stronger" (?), it has no military, tourism accounts for 80% of its GDP, during WWII it served as a smuggling route between Vichy France and Fascist Spain, they're not a full member of the EU and Andorrans are a minority in Andorra.

The more you know, I guess...and damn, America needs to know more

Sphere: Related Content

Wow! Sign Me Up!

Scientology must be the most amazing thing ever! According to these “real testimonials”



The Leader is good, The Leader is great I surrender my will as of this date

Maybe Dianetics and Scientology can help you like it did these people in such amazing ways

• Dianetics help you understand what is it and resolves it
• And will get rid of that internal conversation in your head (so will Thorazine -those voices can be nasty)
• Dianetics will prevent you from getting really really really really nervous and freezing (as will alcohol)
• Your decision making process will be [snap snap snap] right there
• Dianetics will give you the power
• You won’t feel the body anymore, you’ll just float (as will psychotropics)
• You will reclassify into a different person (in what I can only assume to be a Total Recall process)
• When you’re about to die just by doing dianetics with an auditor all your vital signs will get back to normal
• Your Allergies will be over
• Your eyesight will increase tremendously
• Your sense of smell will come back, even after 12 years. Whoa
• Dianetics cures Cancer! Cancer!
  
• You’ll feel lighter, walk differently get a brighter face, clearer eyes
• You’ll realize that you’re not twenty years old
• Your eyes and heart will open
• Feel alert when you click your fingers, Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Bing.

Jesus H Christ that’s all very tempting but I think I'll stick with free will and my own money.

(from BWE )

Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na Leader! Leader! Leader...
Homer: Batman! ... I mean Leader!

Sphere: Related Content

Smart and Appalling

MENSA, that society of geniuses (Sharon Stone's a member in case you didn't know) who are so smart they have an acronym that makes no sense to my puny little brain have released a list of what they determine to be the smartest shows of all time
Top ten smartest shows of all time (in no particular order):

1. M*A*S*H
2. Cosmos (with Carl Sagan)
3. CSI
4. House
5. West Wing
6. Boston Legal
7. All in the Family
8. Frasier
9. Mad About You
10. Jeopardy

I'm assuming this is only an American list because the Brits had a game show called Masterminds which is wicked hahd. Also isn't Boston Legal just The Practice but with older stars and more zoomy camera work? Also The Simpsons I guess doesn't fit into their criteria but that is an incredibly intelligent show
Anyway
Almost coincidentally or by some divine stroke Entertainment Weekly has released a list of their own, of the most appalling shows in TV History, and with the exception of Kid Nation, which may have been the smartest show ever (remember that time they chose religious books over like go carts?) this list could be deemed the dumbest shows ever. In countdown order

Moment of Truth
Jail
Kid Nation
Britney and Kevin: Chaotic / Hey Paula!
The Anna Nicole Smith Show
The Swan / I Want a Famous Face
Temptation Island
Cheaters
Flavor of Love, Flavor of Love 2, Flavor of Love 3, I Love New York, and I Love New York 2
Keeping Up With the Kardashians / The Bad Girls Club
Shows centered around the concept of ''millionaires''
Wife Swap / Trading Spouses: Meet Your New Mommy
Chains of Love
Big Brother / The Real World
The Simple Life
My Super Sweet 16
MTV's Entire Programming Slate
The Littlest Groom / Age of Love
The Bachelor
The Jerry Springer Show

(from Defamer)
The Littlest Groom? What's that? I'm assuming a little person is involved which probably makes it horrible and exploitive.
Of course we shouldn't be surprised that there are far far more appalling and dumb shows on TV than smart ones, after all we're Americans! We're dumb and we're not only proud of it, we're hostile to book learnin'
From The NY Times
"Joining the circle of curmudgeons this season is Eric G. Wilson, whose “Against Happiness” warns that the “American obsession with happiness” could “well lead to a sudden extinction of the creative impulse, that could result in an extermination as horrible as those foreshadowed byglobal warming and environmental crisis and nuclear proliferation.”

Hmm,did anyone else see Idiocracy? because that's a smart movie...and it seems like that's where we're headed

Sphere: Related Content

Likely Story

Australians are too lazy to come up with believable excuses:

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) -- A man who hid his wife's body for 23 years in a steel drum in the couple's suburban Australian backyard was convicted Saturday of her murder.

Frederick Boyle, 58, claimed he hid the body of Edwina Boyle out of panic after finding her dead in bed at their home on the outskirts of the southern city of Melbourne on October 6, 1983.

He had pleaded not guilty to her murder at the outset of his weeklong trial, but a Victoria state Supreme Court jury found him guilty Saturday.

Boyle told the court this week he found his 30-year-old wife dead in bed with two bullets in her head and one of his neckties around her throat.

Boyle had told his two daughters their mother ran off with a truck driver, but a son-in-law found the remains in the 170-liter (44-gallon) drum while tidying the yard in October 2006

You have 23 years to come up with a story and that's the one you come up with? I mean really. And why would you actually keep the drum- wouldn't you have had time to get rid of it?
But the more I think about maybe this guy is a genius- maybe he knows that it is like the worst alibi/story ever and it is so bad that he wanted the autorhities to believe that unless it were the truth he would have come up with something more believable. Oh and he was having an affair to boot. Bloody brilliant.

Sphere: Related Content

A Moment of Carolina Hate

pretty big game tomorrow. And in honor of, here's an oldie but goodie from after Roy Williams and Kansas lost the 2002 Championship to Syracuse

A short time later Roy Will was introduced as Carolina's coach and still has yet to win a title with players that he actually recruited.
I could give a shit about North Carolina too, Roy.
gthc,gth

Sphere: Related Content

Dumb Game Show Answers

because laughing is good. And laughing "with" others is even better
Reuters had an article, about the dumbest game show answers ever that I thought I'd share and making this post, I’ve laughed harder and longer than I have in while

Here are leading contenders for the "Dumb Down" gold medal:

Presenter: What happened in Dallas on November 22,1963?

Contestant: I don't know, I wasn't watching it then

Presenter: Which American actor is married to Nicole Kidman?

Contestant: Forrest Gump
(well, Tom Cruise may actually be dumber but I don’t like when the word “retard” is used as an insult, otherwise I would say Tom is one)

Presenter: In which country is Mount Everest?

Contestant: Er, it's not in Scotland is it?

Presenter: Name a film starring Bob Hoskins that is also the
name of a famous painting by Leonardo da Vinci

Contestant: Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

Presenter: In which European city was the first opera house
opened in 1637?

Contestant: Sydney

Presenter: How long did the Six-Day War between Egypt and Israel last?

Contestant: (after long pause) Fourteen days

Presenter: Where did the D-Day landings take place?

Contestant: (after pause) Pearl Harbor?

Presenter: What is the currency in India

Contestant: Ramadan

Presenter: Johnny Weissmuller died on this day. Which
jungle-swinging character clad only in a loin cloth did he play?

Contestant: Jesus

Here are some more dumb contestants and answers from the Family Feud




Who needs help on the first question of Who Wants to be a Millionaire?

Definitely this kid

Vandy had to have been proud.

Here are a few more examples of Stupid Game Show Answers





“I’ve never heard that word before so I’ll say Karate School”



To leave this on a happy note these are examples of Dumb Luck. (that first couple was amazing)


but I can’t forget the best answer ever


ha, i love it! i love them all!

Sphere: Related Content

Hanoi John

John McCain, barring something that I can’t foresee*, will be the Republican Nominee (get on board the Straight Talk Express! Choo choo!)
But some veterans (ok,I think I read that "they're" really just one guy who must think in the plural) aren’t fond of him and probably never will be, over something that I think was last an issue in 1992 and they put together lots of happy primers about why they don't trust American Hero John McCain, the following being one copied in full

Both McCain III’s father and grandfather were Admirals in the United States Navy. His father Admiral John S. ”Junior” McCain was commander of U.S. forces in Europe - later commander of American forces in Vietnam while McCain III was being held prisoner of war. His grandfather John S. McCain, Sr. commanded naval aviation at the Battle of Okinawa in 1945. McCain III, like his father and grandfather, also attended the United States Naval Academy. McCain III finished near the bottom of his graduating class in 1958.

McCain III lost five U.S. Navy aircraft
1 - Student pilot McCain III lost jet number one in 1958 when he plunged into Corpus Christi Bay while practicing landings.
2 - Pilot McCain III lost another plane two years later while he was deployed in the Mediterranean. ”Flying too low over the Iberian Peninsula, he took out some power lines which led to a spate of newspaper stories in which he was predictably identified as the son of an admiral.
3 - Pilot McCain III lost number three in 1965 when he was returning from flying a Navy trainer solo to Philadelphia for an Army-Navy football game. McCain III radioed, ”I’ve got a flameout” and ejected at one thousand feet. The plane crashed to the ground and McCain III floated to a deserted beach.
4 - Combat pilot McCain III lost his fourth on July 29, 1967, soon after he was assigned to the USS Forrestal as an A-4 Skyhawk combat pilot. While waiting his turn for takeoff, an accidently fired rocket slammed into McCain Jr’s. plane. He escaped from the burning aircraft, but the explosions that followed killed 134 sailors, destroyed at least 20 aircraft, and threatened to sink the ship.
5 - Combat pilot McCain III lost a fifth plane three months later (Oct. 26, 1967) during his 23rd mission over North Vietnam when he failed to avoid a surface-to-air missile. McCain III ejected from the plane breaking both arms and a leg in the process and subsequently parachuted into Truc Bach Lake near Hanoi. After being pulled from the lake by the North Vietnamese, McCain III was bayoneted in his left foot and shoulder and struck by a rifle butt. He was then transported to the Hoa Lo Prison, also known as the Hanoi Hilton.

1973 New York Daily News labeled POW McCain III a “PW Songbird”
On McCain III’s fourth day of being denied medical treatment, slapped, and threatened with death by the communist (they were demanding military information in exchange for medical treatment), McCain III broke and told his interrogator, ”O.K., I’ll give you military information if you will take me to the hospital.” U.S. News and World Report, May 14, 1973 article written by former POW John McCain. It was then that the communist learned that McCain III’s father was Admiral John S. McCain, the soon-to-be commander of all U.S. Forces in the Pacific. The Vietnamese rushed McCain III to Gai Lam military hospital (U.S. government documents), a medical facility normally unavailable for U.S. POWs. By Nov. 9, 1967 (U.S. government documents) Hanoi press was quoting McCain III describing his mission including the number of aircraft in his flight, information about rescue ships, and the order of which U.S. attacks would take place. While in still in North Vietnam’s military hospital, McCain III gave an interview to prominent French television reporter Francois Chalais for a series titled Life in Hanoi. Chalais’ interview with McCain III was aired in Europe. Vietnamese doctors operated on McCain’s Leg in early December, 1967. Six weeks after he was shot down, McCain was taken from the hospital and delivered to a U.S. POW camp, In May of 1968, McCain III allowed himself to be interviewed by two North Vietnamese generals at separate times.” May 14, 1973 article written by former POW John McCain In August 1968, other POWs learned for the first time that John McCain III had been taken prisoner. On June 5, 1969, the New York Daily News reported in a article headlined Reds Say PW Songbird Is Pilot Son of Admiral, “ . . . Hanoi has aired a broadcast in which the pilot son of United States Commander in the Pacific, Adm. John McCain, purportedly admits to having bombed civilian targets in North Vietnam and praises medical treatment he has received since being taken prisoner . . .” The Washington Post explained McCain III’s broadcast: “The EnglishLanguage broadcast beamed at South Vietnam was one of a series using American prisoners. It was in response to a plea by Defense Secretary Melvin S. Laird, May 19, that North Vietnam treat prisoners according to the humanitarian standards set forth by the Geneva Convention.” In 1970, McCain III agreed to an interview with Dr. Fernando Barral, a Spanish psychiatrist who was living in Cuba at the time. The meeting between Barral and McCain III (which was photographed by the Vietnamese) took place away from the prison at the office of the Committee for Foreign Cultural Relations in Hanoi (declassified government document). During the meeting, POW McCain sipped coffee and ate oranges and cakes with the Cuban. While talking with Barral, McCain III further seriously violated the military Code of Conduct by failing to evade answering questions ”to the utmost of his ability” when he, according government documents, helped Barral by answering questions in Spanish, a language McCain had learned in school. The interview was published in the in January 1970. McCain III was released from North Vietnam March 15, 1973 In 1993, during one of his many trips back to Hanoi, McCain asked the Vietnamese not to make public any records they hold pertaining to returned U.S. POWs. McCain III claims, that while a POW, he tried to kill himself. McCain III was awarded “medals for valor” equal to nearly a medal-and-a-half for each hour he spent in combat For 23 combat missions (an estimated 20 hours over enemy territory), the U.S. Navy awarded McCain III, the son of famous admirals, a Silver Star, a Legion of Merit for Valor, a Distinguished Flying Cross, three Bronze Stars, two Commendation medals plus two Purple Hearts and a dozen service medals. “McCain had roughly 20 hours in combat,” explains Bill Bell, a veteran of Vietnam and former chief of the U.S. Office for POW/MIA Affairs -- the first official U.S. representative in Vietnam since the 1973 fall of Saigon. “Since McCain got 28 medals,” Bell continued, “that equals to about a medal-and-a-half for each hour he spent in combat. There were infantry guys -- grunts on the ground -- who had more than 7,000 hours in combat and I can tell you that there were times and situations where I’m sure a prison cell would have looked pretty good to them by comparison. The question really is how many guys got that number of medals for not being shot down.” For years, McCain has been an unchecked master at manipulating an overly friendly and biased news media. The former POW turned Congressman, turned U.S. Senator, has managed to gloss over his failures as a pilot and his collaborations with the enemy to become America’s POW-hero presidential candidate.

Interesting. What really gets me is the idea that McCain is some Manchurian candidate plant brainwashed by a government that no longer exists just waiting……………for like 35 years(! ) to make his move.
Beyond ludicrous.
(Barack, however is still a strapping and young man, and getting massive donations from foreign sources )

If you want to know more about how John McCain “has betrayed his country” and is waiting to do it again, or something, this website is pretty (obsessed) extensive

*of course I couldn’t foresee that it was going to rain even though the sky was flooded with grey clouds last night, so take all my visions with a heap of salt

Sphere: Related Content

Big Spending Scientologists

Lafayette Hubbard would be quite happy
From Page Six

Longtime Scientologist Nancy Cartwright — best known as the voice of Bart Simpson — last year gave the church $10 million to help spread the word of founder L. Ron Hubbard into other galaxies.

It was all part of Scientology’s Global Salvage effort, which aims to “de-aberrate” Earth — meaning to rid mankind of psychology ills and other “aberrant” behavior.

In 2004, [Tom Cruise Mapother] was awarded a Platinum Meritorious Award for a $2.5 million gift. Two years later, he doled out another $2.5 million, for which the International Association of Scientologists kicked him up to Diamond Meritorious awardee.

Recent Scientology publications reveal that a host of A-list Scientologists were honored for their generosity at a black-tie awards ceremony at the church’s headquarters in Clearwater, Fla., last summer.


Here are some of the celeb gifts from 2007 and their corresponding rewards:

* Nancy Cartwright, 50, Patron Laureate Award: $10 million.
* Kirstie Alley, 57, Diamond Meritorious Award: $5 million.
* John Travolta, 53, Gold Meritorious Award: $1 million.
* Kelly Preston, 45, Gold Meritorious Award: $1 million.
* Priscilla Presley, 62, Patron Award: $50,000.

Uh oh John- Tom is more clear than you

Well, even if you don’t receive anything else, such as spiritual gifts for your millions upon millions of dollars at least you get “various gold trophies, crystal statuettes and plaques” as well as fancy titles.

Yeah and those are just like donations, which are on top of all the other services and charges (see how much they’ll cost you)
Two hundred and seventy seven thousand dollars (give or take a 10)just to reach OT VIII, jesus hubbard christ! Y'know in Christianity monks and priests take vows of poverty and get to know all the secrets. Bizzare

Is anyone else interested in seeing Nancy Cartwright doing that Tom Cruise video in the voice of Bart Simpson? Because I am, for at least 3 more minutes

Oh and your “Global Salvage effort, which aims to “de-aberrate” Earth — meaning to rid mankind of psychology ills and other “aberrant” behavior.”
Hmm, how’s that working out for y’all? And though I'm kind of curios about it....It sounds too much to me like cleansing and not so much the good kind- more the ethnic

P.s. Does anyone know who Steve Brackell or Jack and Lucy Murphy are? I want to persecute and boycott.

Sphere: Related Content

Spear the Turtle

The ACC Season really starts today for Duke at Wasteland
From Duke Basketball Report

Board material from Maryland’s Cliff Tucker!

“I can’t stand Duke. It’s one of the reasons I wanted to come here so I can beat Duke, I already got North Carolina. Duke is next. I cannot stand Duke. I tell people all the time, if they gave me a scholarship and that was my only Division I scholarship, I’d go Division II or something like that. I would never, ever go there. I don’t know what it is, I can’t stand Duke"

And who is Mr. Tucker that he feels that he can make such comments?
A lifelong Maryland fan, freshmen from El Paso. A two time captain of his football team (as a receiver) recruited by Clemson, Georgetown, Texas Tech, UTEP, and Uconn son of Regina and Clifton Tucker ... enjoys video games and watching movies in his free time

Who averages 4.5 points a game 2.4 rebounds and shoots 44% from the free throw line. (and yet thinks he has the right to talk trash. And about how he “already got North Carolina", he had 8 points and 2 rebounds in that game. I’m sure his high school coach Tom Shukit back at Chaplin must be proud)
Hopefully he’s improved his strength and long range shooting and ball handling , he'll need to for tonight against God.

Seriously kid you should’ve stuck to football (so y’know you could've lost to Oregon State)

Spear the turtle


gotta love redneck white guys

God I hate Maryland (though they’re not our rivals.) Win or Lose something will be burning tonight in College Park
{UPDATE: Cliff Tucker had 3 rebounds 4 points and 3 assists. Next time spend less time hating, and more time not sucking.}

Sphere: Related Content

Bizarre Beliefs Weekly

Where I judge and mock people based on their beliefs.
Why?
Because it’s Sunday, there are a lot of kooks out there and besides why should Scientologists be the only ones made fun of?

This week: Nuwaubianism
(all information cribbed from my god, Wikipedia)

Nuwaubianism is an umbrella term for the religious doctrines, historical and scientific beliefs of the followers of Malachi Z. York. These are sometimes referred to by such terms as “Nuwaubu”/“Nuwaupu”, “Wu-Nuwaubu”, “Right Knowledge”, “Sound Right Reasoning”, “Overstanding”, and “Factology” but have had many other names through the years. The Nuwaubians originated as a Black Muslim group in New York in the 1970s, and have gone through many changes since.

Nuwaubianism is an esoteric cosmology, a collection of religious teachings, a group of religious, tribal, and fraternal organizations, and a set of cultural practices that is multifaceted and ever-changing.

Nuwaubianism borrows from a wide range of sources which include Theosophy-derived New Age movements such as Astara as well as the Rosicrucians, Freemasonry, the Shriners, the Moorish Science Temple of America, the revisionist Christianity and Islam of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the numerology of Rashad Khalifa, the ancient astronaut theories of Zecharia Sitchin, the works of Richard Shaver (a proponent of the Hollow Earth theory), David Icke, the UFO mythology of greys and reptilians, the political and legal theories of patriot mythology, modern scientific and pseudoscientific legends like those of Area 51, the Philadelphia Experiment, Project Blue Book, Montauk Project, and MJ-12, popular conspiracy theories such as those about the Illuminati or the Bilderberg Group, and even a paperback on fortune-telling. The all-embracing belief system of Nuwaubianism actually pre-dates several of the influences that subsequently absorbed and adopted.

Journalist Adam Heimlich reviewed a number of York’s booklets in 2000 and wrote:
A partial list, from my notes, of places I’d encountered Nuwaubian notions before includes Chariots of the Gods and the Rael’s [sic] embellishments on that book, conspiracy lit, UFO lit, the human potential movement, Buddhism and new-age, astrology, theosophy and Blavatsky, Leonard Jeffries and other Afrocentrics, Cayce, LaRouche, alternative medicine, self-help lit, Satanism, the Atkins diet, numerology and yoga. Many of these York mentions by name. There are also extensive discourses on the Torah, Gospels and Koran, as well as on Rastafarianism, the Nation of Islam and the Five Percent Nation

York’s first publication was released in 1967 when he was 22 years old, and was entitled Bible Interpretations and Explanations. It taught biblical theology in a way that was distinct from a westernized orthodox Christian standard. At this time York referred to himself as Amunubi Rahkaptah, an Egyptian/Semitic hybrid name (Amun=Faithful, Nubi=Informer, Rah=Soul, Ka=Spirit, Ptah=Opener). His follow up publication along the same line of thought was a four part series called The Nine Ball, published in 1971, that was authored by three divine incantations of York known as “Wu Nupu, Asu Nupu and Naba Nupu.” The Nine Ball’s opening slogan was “LIBERATION INFORMATION for the Woolly-Haired People called the ETHIOPIAN RACE.” It focused on cosmology with an Afrocentric slant. In later lectures York claims his initial attempts at reaching his people though this teaching failed, and so he decided to adopt a more mainstream religious form.

In 1967, York began to teach Islam under the name “Imam Isa Abdullah Ibn Abu Bakr Muhammad” and started the Ansar Pure Sufi community. This eventually progressed and integrated under morphing organizational titles into, Islam (Ansaarullah), Sufism (Sons of the Green Light) Judaism (Nubian Islamic Hebrews), Christianity (The Holy Tabernacle Ministeries, The Egyptian Church of Karast), Freemasonry (The Nuwaubian Grand Lodge, The Supreme Grand Lodge, The International Supreme Council of Arab Shrinedom), Sumerian (Ancient Mystic Order of Melchizedek) and finally Egyptology (The Ancient Egyptian Order) where he began to once again refer to himself as “Amunubi Rahkaptah.” In each school York used a plethora of titles for himself, all befitting a “High Priest.”

During the 1980s York began using the phrase “I came giving you want you wanted, so that you would want what I have to give,” to explain his ever morphing and growing doctrine.

Some of York’s followers consider him to be a living god. At times he has encouraged this interpretation, and at other times, York has suggested that he is merely channeling the divine through various personalities He has also identified himself as Al-Khidr (“the green one”) and as Melchizedek (who York says is also the archangel Michael). In later years York dismissed bodily worship of himself in a preface that was published within all of his books:

" I am not the Lord Adonai, Jesus Messiah “The Christ”; nor am I a holy man, nor a preacher. I am a Master Teacher, a guide."

Nuwaubians also may view themselves as gods, using such sources as the Bible and Torah to validate their claims. Nuwaubians do not see the use of the word “god” as just referring to a universal creator, but also a title that one receives upon reaching a state of perfection or absolute power.

Much of the purpose of Nuwaubian doctrine and practice is to counteract what they call “the spell of Leviathan” or “the spell of Kingu.” In Nuwaubian mythology, Leviathan is a god associated with the moon, sex, and spirit — also known as Lucifer, Sin, Set, Thoth, Siva, Hermes, Jehovah, Poseidon and the biblical serpent.

Nuwaubians believe that the Spell of Leviathan was cast by the devil thousands of years ago to hypnotize Black people into “spiritual ignorance and racial indifference” through such media as the Bible and certain elements of popular culture.

Leviathan has many aliases:

Sam is short for one of his titles, SamaEl meaning “poison those of EL.” He knows his name. He calls himself Uncle Sam or Dr. Seuss (Zues) with his famous statement, “Sam I Am, I Am Sam.” This is what they teach the children; not ours however, for they will get right knowledge

Some of the Nuwaubian racial doctrine borrows from Moorish Science and the Nation of Islam. York’s racial philosophy explicitly indicates that certain blacks – "Nubians" or “Melanites” – are of a superior race in fact as well as in descent.

Periodically Nuwaubians will claim not to belong to a racist belief system, for instance quoting York’s statement: “We accept as fact that no one race of people is better than the other. In fact no one wins the race in racism.”

However, other statements from York and his followers indicate that his philosophy does ascribe moral characteristics based on race. For instance, in one lecture York said: “White people are the devil. They say the Nuwaubians are not racist – bullcrap! I am. He might not be; that’s his prerogative. I am. White people are devils — always was, always will be.”

"We must realize that when a people is trying to make themselves look bigger than others, they may take the main characters and heroes of a false or true story in religion and/or mythology and build their own story around the heroes and characters, and this means that the story may be greatly changed to suit the purpose of those rewriting it. "

—Rakhptah, Amunubi (Malachi York), Bible Interpretations and Explanations booklet one (1967), p. 22

While race is a centrally important concept in Nuwaubian thought, York’s teachings include many different racial origin myths that are difficult to reconcile. One version has the “Mongoloid” and “Caucasoid” races descending as inferior mutant versions of the original “Negroes”, with the Caucasians suffering from genetic albinism as evidence that they are at “the end of their genes.”However, most whites are said to not really be Caucasian, but Negroid Mulattos or “coloreds”; it is only those with blond hair and blue eyes who are Aryan Caucasians.

White people (sometimes also referred to as “Amorites,” “Hyksos,” “Canaanites,” “Tamahu,” or “Mankind”) are said in one Nuwaubian myth to have been originally created as a race of killers to serve blacks as a slave army, but this plan went awry:

The Caucasian has not been chosen to lead the world. They lack true emotions in their creation. We never intended them to be peaceful. They were bred to be killers, with low reproduction levels and a short life span. What you call Negroid was to live 1,000 years each and the other humans 120 years. But the warrior seed of Caucasians only 60 years. They were only created to fight other invading races, to protect the God race Negroids. But they went insane, lost control when they were left unattended. They were never to taste blood. They did, and their true nature came out.… Because their reproduction levels were cut short, their sexual organs were made the smallest so that the female of their race will want to breed with Negroids to breed themselves out of existence after 6,000 years. It took 600 years to breed them, part man and part beast.

Nubians are said to be only accidentally a “brown” race – they have rusted in Earth’s atmosphere from their original green color because the magnesium in their melanin has been replaced by iron. The original, supreme, “Ether 9 beings” in Nuwaubian mythology were also green because of chlorophyll in their skin.

Some human varieties are explained by variations in extra-terrestrial descent. Morbidly obese people, for instance, may be descended from the grotesque and elephant-nosed Deros (see also: Richard Sharpe Shaver); people with Down’s Syndrome may be descended from the 48-chromosomed Teros. (Some Teros are said to live underground on Earth today, with some resembling humans so much that they can come to the surface and mingle with us without being noticed.)

Another Nuwaubian explanation of racial difference has various human types evolving from various primate species, with some Caucasians deriving from cross-breeding the baboon and orangutan, Pygmys from the chimpanzee and gibbon, and so forth.

Other Nuwaubian explanations of racial differences draw on the Hebrew creation myths from Genesis: “Nubians are Hamites through the sons of Ham and Mizraim (Genesis 10:6). The paleman is a Hamite through Ham’s fourth son, Libana (Canaan) whose descendants inherited his curse of leprosy (Genesis 10:15-18) Another explanation has Caucasians descended from Cain: “Adam and Eve were sent to the Aegean Islands between Asia and Europe, where they started having children, and each couple’s first born child was an Albino and those Albinos are called Cain in the Bible, and Cain is short for Caucasian”

The pale man originated from the Caucasus mountains, where there was very little plant life and not much means for salt. This condition forced him to rob the Nubian female of her chastity in order to keep his seed alive, it’s called integration. The Caucasian woman who was left in the mountains, resorted to lying with and having sex with beasts: such as the jackal, which is an ancestor of today’s dog. The phrase “dog is man’s best friend” came from this situation. The dog would lick the festered sores of the leper and clean them for him. His seed was kept alive because the Caucasian woman and the jackal mated. This is where you get people who possess an animalistic nature.

Nuwaubians believe that miscegenation is causing a new race to develop, the “Neutranoids,” who are of no discernible distinct race and are being encouraged and exploited by sinister forces who are against “right racism” and humanity’s natural diversity

In Nuwaubian doctrine, there is a moral law that people are required to respect each other, and also a moral law that races are required to respect each other. The “Code of Races” requires that a person not do something wrong to another person because they are of a different race (“unless justice requires it”), and also requires that people be loyal to their own race.

During a 6,000 year “moon cycle,” people are said to be freed to violate these moral laws — but the consequences of this are not avoided but only deferred, and may fall upon the children of the wrong-doer, or their children. We are said to be currently at the end of this cycle and the guilty people and guilty races are due to meet their just punishment in an Armageddon in which only the innocent will survive

York once explained the “Tamahus” (whites) this way: “[They] have an unlit solar plexus sun, they only have a moon or lunar plexus. It reflects your sun light as they take your soul (sun).” White people with their “thin yellow or opaque hair” reflect the sun, and so “the sun’s energy can’t keep them charged with sol (soul).”

The Tam’a-hu’s Time Is Over And They Are Falling Out Daily Because They Are Not Sun People. They Are Moon People, And The Moon Cycle Is Over. They Are Dying Of Cancer And Diseases Caused By The Intense Heat And Rays Of The Sun’s Ultraviolet Rays That’s Depleting The Ozone Layer. The Luciferian Which Means “Light Bearer” Is Using His Same Tactic Of Depleting The Ozone Layer On This Planet Like He Did On Rizq.

Furthermore:

The Caucasoids Has Thinner Skin Than You, Thinner Flank Hair, Lighter Eyes, With No Soul. The Caucasoid Try To Claim That The Only Difference Between A White Man And A Black Man Is The Skin Color, However, The DNA Analysis Which Is Under Your Black Or White Skin, Determines That Under The Skin, The Whole Structure Of These Two Races Are Totally Different. The Caucasoid Breath Differently Than The Negroids Do. We As Negroid, Breath In Thru Our Nose, While The Caucasoids Breathe Mostly In Their Mouth. The Caucasoids Are Trying To Intake Your Breath That You Breath Out, Because They Need It To Keep Their Pilot—Lunar Plexus Lit Inside To Try And Re-light Their Central Light. That's Why Those That Hang Around, Live With Or Marry Blacks, Change, Act And Think Like Blacks. Other Caucasoids Walk Stiff, While Negroids Walk With Soul And Life. The Caucasoid Breed In Litters Like Animals, 6 Or 7 At A Time, While Negroids Give Birth To 1 Or 2 Babies At A Time. Their Hair Grows Lank And Lifeless Towards The Ground, While Our Hair Grows Up, And Is Full Of Energy Toward The Sun. We As Negroids Are Physically, Mentally, And Spiritually Different Than The Caucasoids.


York has claimed to be an extraterrestrial master teacher from the planet Rizq. York wrote, “We have been coming to this planet before it had your life form on it.… My incarnation as an Ilah Mutajassid or Avatara was originally in the year 1945 A.D. In order to get here I travelled by one of the smaller passenger crafts called SHAM out of a Motherplane called MERKABAH or NIBIRU.” This version of York came to Earth on 16 March 1970. (Comet Bennett, which was visible on that date, is said to have really been York’s spacecraft).

York taught that the Motherplane/NIBIRU would launch the Crystal City or New Jerusalem (see: Book of Revelation 21:2) to our solar system from its position in Orion. A 40-year process of taking the 144,000 Chosen Few (see: Book of Revelation 14:1) — 12,000 each from the Twelve Tribes of Israel — into the Planet Craft NIBIRU began on 12 August 2003 and will end on 12 August 2043.

These Chosen Few will be groomed for 1,000 years and returned to Earth for the final battle against the Luciferians and also to redeem man from the 6,000 year rulership of the Devil and his seed. Though August 12, 2003, the beginning of this process, passed without incident, it has been taught that the August 14, 2003 blackout of the Eastern United States and Canada marked the beginning of this Rapture-like event. The superficial similarity of these beliefs to those of the Heaven’s Gate cult led to some worried newspaper articles after that cult’s mass suicide during the appearance of Comet Hale-Bopp in 1997, in which the cult was reported to have said that a spacecraft was following the comet.

York told his followers that in 1952, grotesque extraterrestrial Andromedeans that resembled the Predator met with and frightened U.S. President Harry S. Truman. Other extraterrestrials have been trading with Earth since the Eisenhower administration, and are responsible for giving us technologies ranging from the polio vaccine to the hula hoop. Earth is said to still be visited by extraterrestrials, some of which prey on human children.

Currently, there are said to be over 70 different species of “Grey” and 16 different species of “Reptilians” on Earth. Human fetuses are said to go through Reptilian and Grey stages during their development (and if they are born prematurely, they will remain Reptilians or Greys).

Among the reasons why these things are not widely acknowledged, according to York, is that extraterrestrials plant ideas and images in the minds of the makers of Hollywood movies about extraterrestrials so that these fictional stories can be used to discredit people who know the truth. Examples of movies with such encoded content about the reality of aliens among us are those in the Star Wars series:

Yoda… is short for Judah. Freemasons are inspired by one entity and that is a grey, by the name of Yoda. Yoda guides Freemasonry back to Judah, with the ancient Israel masonry. The British “Covenant Of Man” symbolizes the empire striking back. America is the empire fighting to overthrow Europe.… The word Yoda is not an English word as you have been led to believe. Its root word yawdaw appears 111 times in the Old Testament, means “to give thanks or praise, throw down, cast, shoot.” The word Yadah meaning, to “to praise, give thanks” stems from the root word Yawdaw and appears only two times in the Old Testament (Daniel 2:23, Daniel 6:10). Not to mention the fact Yoda played in [the film] Return of the Jedi, and the word jedi is the same as yeti, it’s just a matter of a letter, it’s really the same word. Yeti is the name of Sasquatch (Bigfoot), also called Seti which is equivalent to the Extraterrestrials called the Seirians.

Other Nuwaubian beliefs:

• Saturn is not actually a planet, but a gaseous ball adjacent to Titan, one of Saturn's moons which the Nuwauabians regard as a planet. The head and hat of Santa Claus are symbolic representations of Saturn, Titan, and Saturn's rings.
• Thomas Paine plagiarized the U.S. Constitution from the unwritten Constitution of the Iroquois.
• The Pyramids of Egypt are, among other things, electromagnetic antennas that create standing columnar waves of tachyon energy to prevent the wobbling of the Earth.
• “The Koran called the Holy Qur’aan or the glorious Qur’aan as held in the hands of Muslims today is a product of Jewish scholars and the Catholic Church’s branch of the Jesuit priest under Pope Augustine.”
• “[A]ll courtrooms in America today are commercial marketplaces dealing in matters bearing exclusively upon private, commercial scrip known as Federal Reserve Notes. Today’s courtrooms are impersonal businesses under jurisdiction of a foreign, occupying, military power that are managed from the bench (from the Italian banca:bank) by merchant bankers called ‘judges’ and ‘magistrates’ who enforce private, copyrighted, corporate policy (known as code) wholly owned by British corporations.”
• The Earth is hollow and contains cities populated by different species of people, such as the Deros, the Teros, the Flugelrods, the Duwanis, the Dunakial, and the Anunnaqi. The legends of the Sumerians, Ancient Egyptians, Aztecs, Olmecs, Mayans, Hopi, and Hindus speak of these things (for instance, the story of the river Styx). Many of the chambers of the Egyptian pyramids lead to this subterranean world.
• Human origins
• Everyone is originally conceived as twins, but usually only one of the twins survives to be born.
• It is important to bury the afterbirth so that Satan does not use it to make a duplicate of the recently-born child.
• Furthermore, some aborted fetuses survive their abortion to live in the sewers, where they are being gathered and organized to take over the world.
• People were once perfectly symmetrical and ambidextrous, but then a meteorite struck Earth and tilted its axis causing handedness and shifting the heart off-center in the chest.
• Reincarnation has a physical as well as spiritual aspect:
• The physical body, when one dies, recycles from the ground in which it’s planted, it then penetrates into the atmosphere as film or dust particles and are breathed into the nostrils of human beings where they are recycled by triggering nerves in the sinus cavity. This sinus cavity works like a kidney to sift out the unneeded particles and relates the chemical composure [sic] of that which is needed into the mother’s blood stream and the human flesh is reanimated and this is the process by which a child is given form or flesh in the Mother’s womb.
• Each of us has seven clones: "Clones are in tune with each other unconsciously and linked etherically, which means anything that happens to you the cloned counterparts of you feels also. For instance you may feel a sharp pain, for no apparent reason like your hand may feel like it has been cut and that is because your clones hand may have been. You can have an emotional break down out of the “clear blue sky” because one of your counterparts did. For instance me, I have had smoke come out of my mouth, it was a strange tobacco, for no apparent reason. It turned out my duplicate in Tibet smokes and the smoke came through me. I do not smoke anything."
• Women existed for many generations before they invented men through genetic manipulation.– yet: " The great pharmacist and chemist Nergal Shar’etsar Ruler of the Underworld, was also involved in the breeding process of the new beings (Homo Sapiens). When Adam was a child of two years of age, three years of real time, the scientist Nergal went into his bone marrow to take blood to mix it in to create Eve, which was then implanted into the womb of Anath, Mother of Eve. This bone marrow is what religious scholars say is the rib (tsala’) in the Bible."
• Homo sapiens is the result of cloning experiments that were done on Mars using Homo erectus.
• “When the Earth shifts, babies will stop being born and that day will come soon. Babies are not really being born anymore. They are being cloned.”
• Edward Leedskalnin and Nikola Tesla were Venusians.
• Animal origins
• Birds evolved from fish, not from reptiles. And some species of dinosaur, for instance the Tyrannosaurus Rex, evolved from extra-terrestrial greys.
• The pig was created by Imhotep and Zoser during the time of Abraham, by grafting cells from the dog, cat and rat together, and was designed to help dispose of leprous corpses.
• Anti-Nubian conspiracies
• “Haven’t you ever wondered why for the simplest blood tests your doctor needs 4 tubes of blood? Where is all this blood going? The albino man’s ‘blood bank’ is just a sophisticated way of getting all the blood he needs! It is still a form of vampirism.”
• Alcoholic beverages are made cheaply available to Nubians by the powers that be in order to preserve their blood and organs better “(just like they preserve organs in jars in laboratories)” for later extraction.
• Disco was created by the devil to win the souls of the Nubians: “The evil one knows that he can control the music world as long as his agents are within the A & R (Artists and Repertoire, who are responsible for choosing who makes it in the music world) of the well known companies. He cannot evaluate Latin or Black music because he (the evil one) has no soul. He only duplicates it… He had to come up with something to win our souls through his means, and he did it with disco.”
• There is an underground road connecting New York and London. Furthermore, Alternative 3 is a fact, and Mars is being prepared for the evacuation of Earth’s intellectual and political elite.
• “[P]eople like the Pope, and Queen of England and various political leaders of various countries and some members of the clergy gather at the major Sabbats to invoke the malevolent one. On each of these occasions a Nubian man is sacrificed.”
• The Illuminati have nurtured a child, Satan's son, who was born on 6 June 1966 at the Dakota House on 72nd Street in New York to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis of the Rothschild/Kennedy families. The Pope was present at the birth and performed necromantic ceremonies. The child was raised by former U.S. president Richard Nixon and now lives in Belgium, where it is hooked up bodily to a computer called “The Beast 3M” or “3666.” [ED. Note: That was one my absolute favorite]

According to York, just as with our missing barathary glands we have lost our ability to sense many things, our relationship to time has also degraded and restricted our ability to see certain dimensions:

The time and space relationship is linked to the human and Earth’s bio-rhythms, and that determines how many dimensions for a world, which in your case is a third-dimension reality, are up for grabs. This is dealing with the extra space we have in our time. Let me explain. The clocks on Earth used to have a “tick” and a “tock.” Now there is only the “tick.” So time has been changed, and that missing “tock” is up for grabs that can be utilized by extraterrestrial beings who overstand this “altered time,” and they can come in and out of this dimension at will.
Nuwaubians try to discover the deeper meanings of words by using a method in which words are decomposed into syllables and then phrases are created using similarly-sounding syllables, so that for instance caucasian becomes “carcass-asian,”extraterrestrials becomes “extra-terra-astrals,” gospel becomes “ghost spell,” Jesus becomes “Jah+Zeus,” planet becomes “plan E.T.,” and television becomes “tell lie vision

And about their spiritual leader (name umm..a little uncertain)

[He] himself was far from chaste. He explained to his followers:

I do not live under your law, I am not a student enrolled under Earth principles, I don’t have the morals you have, your idea of morals is different. Go back in ancient times, you’ll find out that Anu was married to his sister… and Ishtar was married to her son back then that existed. …I come from a world where we don’t have your laws, and the way we go about things is different. I come from the Pharaoh’s world and in the Pharaoh’s world the Pharaoh saw Sarah, he saw her with himself so he took her. In Abraham’s world that was the wrong thing to do, but the Pharaoh didn’t care about Abraham’s world because he was living in his world and his ritual…

In 2002, York was arrested and charged with over a hundred counts of sexually molesting dozens of children, some as young as four years old.

According to Bill Osinski, who wrote a book on the case:
“When he was finally indicted, state prosecutors literally had to cut back the number of counts listed — from well beyond a thousand to slightly more than 200 — because they feared a jury simply wouldn’t believe the magnitude of York's evil.… [It] is believed to be the nation’s largest child molestation prosecution ever directed at a single person, in terms of number of victims and number of alleged criminal acts.

York was arrested in 2002, and was later sentenced to 135 years in prison

His followers continue to disseminate his teachings as he continues to develop them from behind bars

(oh and on the cover to one of their publications they used Darth Maul, apparently to represent the Devil and of course they’re Republicans)

(more info-and videos!-here )

So so bizarre
P.S. Barack is a Nuwaubian* or at least a Neutranoid. Wesley Snipes is one though.

*possibly not true

Sphere: Related Content