Is God an idiot?

I haven't post anything that has anything to do with religions lately so it's about time I post something. That was what I thought this morning, however I had nothing to write about. I had nothing until I came across this post by James Love at the Huffington Post.

A week ago, Joe Scarborough asked, "is Bush an idiot?" With the world reeling toward ever increasing intolerance, hate and violence, led by persons who express knowledge of "God's will," we might ask, "Is God an idiot?"

George Bush, the person running the US foreign policy like an idiot, claims that God is directing his actions.

Tony Blair, who never seemed like an idiot before, has thrown his career and reputation away, reportedly because of his deep religious faith. Why is God telling Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair to invade and occupy Iraq? Why is God telling Mr. Bush to sanction torture, or degrading the use of diplomacy?

Terrorism, as is defined these days, is much about people carrying out "Gods will." Osama Bin Laden claims to speak on behalf of God when he urges attacks on civilians.

Mahmood Ahmadinezhad, the devout Shia who is president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, appears to be pushing for new nuclear arsenals, and raising the prospects for war in the middle east.

Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the "deeply religious" leader of Hezbollah, is now a hero among many Muslims for provoking a shooting war with Israel. "If you hit Beirut, the Islamic resistance will hit Tel Aviv and is able to do that with God's help," he said.

Israel's aggressive bombing of Lebanon, including countless civilian casualties, is yet another chapter of recent warfare that is based upon religious differences.

Iraq is falling apart, as warfare between Suni and Shia populations are killing thousands per month.

If these conflicts are motivated and directed by persons who pray and listen to God, what does it say about God these days? Or about anyone who claims that God is helping or urging them to wage war or kill?

How is it, that in 2006, we see political leaders of all types claiming that brutality, murder and warfare are "God's will"?

Why are we so defenseless in challenging such ridiculous claims? How have we let religion become a tool to justify the least productive, most foolish, and least moral courses of action?

Do we need a "smarter" God? A "smarter" public? Leaders who can discuss the consequences of hatred, intolerance, violence and warfare in a world that is searching for moral outcomes?

I don't know about you but I'm just sick and tired of politicians claiming that God directs their actions. Is it because they want to appeal to the religious population or is it just a way to say "if anything goes wrong, blame God coz he told me to do it?". By the way, can you sue anyone who claims that God directs his actions? Let's say, for example, I go out and kill an atheist and then claim that God told me to do so. Can I be persecuted? I certainly will be. Bush is getting away with it and we normal people can't. Where's the justice in that?

Person of the day

I hate awards, I think we've already established that but then I don't think that they're useless. Some of them are but not all of them. And today I'm going to give out an award myself for the most amazing person of my day. I don't know her name but she's a nice person. However that's not the basis of this award. She's a nice person and in fact she's a librarian at my uni. What makes her qualified for this particular award is that she yelled at some of those morons who speak at the top of their voice in the library.

 

I spend a lot of time in the library. It's a sad fact for some but for me it's great. I get to sit in a nice, brightly lit, warm, not so quiet most of the time environment as opposed to the ice cold chaotic dungeon that is my room. I get all the books I need a few metres away and that is great for studying most of the time. What I hate about the library is the inconsiderate morons who speak non-stop, often in some languages I don't understand, at the top of their voice to their buddies at the other end of the freaking library. The librarians usually just let them be and who am I to tell them to shut up? So usually I'll just go to the "quiet" study area. If you follow my posts, you'd probably find out that the "quiet" area in the library at my uni is only as quiet as a supermarket but then that's an improvement from the main library which is as noisy as a construction site.

 

When I was at highschool, we used to have this librarian that yell at every single person that was about to open their mouth. It's an exaggeration but she did always yell quite a lot and she kept the library so quiet you can hear somebody farts from 10 metres away. However, the down points of the zealous librarian is that she yelled too often and that kinda broke the elegant, quiet atmosphere. I don't know about other people but I used to hate her coz she disrupted my train of thoughts, or sometimes more often than not my train of quiet whispers. Oh how I want that librarian now, at uni.

 

Anyhow, back to the person of the day, she is the first uni librarian, that I know of, to yell at students for making too much noise. That deserves my award because she made my day.

what's so fascinating about the Emmy?

Truevil watch Grey's anatomy. It's a rather new fact coz all of truevil's friends seem to think that truevil doesn't watch TV full stop. Anyhow, truevil does watch TV shows, anything that's intelligent and has an actual script. Truevil hates anything that's without a script, i.e. those bloody unrealistic "reality" TV shows and what Truevil hates most of all is shows without a script that involves celebrities i.e. bloody dancing with the stars, skating with the stars, celibrities overhaul, celebrities circus, celebrities doing the normal-people-stuffs and the up and coming "how do celebrities use the toilet". Some of those "celebrities" people aren't exactly qualified to be celebrities. Politicians aren't supposed to be celebrities, they're politicians, they lie, sometimes, to get voted and hence famous in a sense but they are NOT celebrities in my book. Celebrities should be used for someone in the Entertainment industry only, like those people flocking up to awards in weird dresses that they think look great. Like those people on the Emmy awards last night.

 

Truevil isn't a great fan of watching awards night on free-to-air TV. In fact, truevil doesn't like any type of awards presenting ceremony except those that truevil will definitely have to accept an award. Yes, truevil boycott any awards night that truevil aren't nominated coz truevil thinks that it's a waste of time going there, sitting there for the night, watching other people accepting awards. Truevil has to have some motivation to watch or go to such ceremony. However, truevil tuned in yesterday to watch the Emmy during the various advertisement breaks throughout the duration of Grey's anatomy.

 

So while watching the Emmy, truevil couldn't help but wondering why on earth anyone would want to watch this pretentious crap. Everyone who rocked up wanted to get some trophies home. The winners, or rather the ones to whom the trophies went to, couldn't really obvously try to rub their winnings under the noses of the losers, or rather the ones to whom the trophies didn't go to. And the losers had to act like they were so glad that the best actors/actresses won and not them. There were great performances by the losers. And truevil meant that they didn't break down and cry or jump on stage and punch the winner in the face because they didn't get the bloody trophies they were nominated for.

 

What was even more mind bloggling is the concept of "beautiful". The people who interview celebrities arriving on the red carpet just keep saying that people they were interviewing were beautiful or looking fantastic even though they look absolutely horrible. How could someone who is supposed to be a sixty-year-old woman and who had, obviously, too much plastic surgery look "beautiful"? She looked absolutely plastic. Her face looked like that of a thirty-year-old woman, all thanks to her plastic surgeon of course, and her neck looked like a wrinkled sultana. What the hell is beautiful there? Why can't these people age normally? Why do they have to hold on to youthful appreances?

 

Truevil heard from somewhere that the red carpet part is usually the part when most people are interested in and truevil just can't understand it? What's so goddamn interesting about people with plastic faces who wears expensive clothes that they didn't have to pay for?

 

 

 

 

what kind of actor is Angelina Jolie?

Last week I posted a post on "Snakes on the plane" and got quite a few comments on my comment about Angelina Jolie. What did I say? I said Angelina Jolie is a good actor and some anonymous guy [please invent a name, anonymous coz there are quite a few anonymous-es around] and Bertwood-eat-fish-filled-with-lead-from-the-Yarra-River seem to agree [with each other] to disagree with me. So the purpose of this post is to clarify my opinion on Angelina Jolie's acting ability or lack thereof.

First thing first, I did say that Angelina Jolie was horrible in Tomb Raider. Not an exact quote but I said something along that line. And who, in their right mind would say that she gave an Oscar-worthy performance with that horrible role. Why? Lara Croft is a stupid character. Any gun-toting, skimpy-outfit-wearing female with unrealistic big boobs are going to be stupid. A movie with said character as a lead is as a result a stupid movie.

However, let's set Tomb Raider 1 and Tomb Raider 2 aside and look at her other movies in which she was great. What movie you might ask. I'd love to list at least 10 movies just to show you Angelina is a good actor, however, after thinking about this for 1 minute, I can only think of 1 movie and it's "girl, interrupted". The rest of her movies that I've watched, she's either mediocre or somewhere between mediocre and bad.

So what's my verdict on Angelina Jolie? She's just a mediocre actor with a lot of luck [since she did win an Oscar for her role in Girl, interrupted]. She is definitely not an extremely bad actor but I admit she's not a good one either.

I think I've just opened a can of worms and Angelina fans are going to boycott me but hey, I've got to admit to what's right!

PS. I've been accused by Bertwood EF [EF stands for eat fastfood] of being "mesmerised by her skilful juggling ability, as exemplified expecially in tomb raider" and I'd like to say that I was not, am not and will not ever be mesmerised by anything by anyone, including Angelina Jolie, in Tomb Raider. Besides, only sex-craved teenage boys are mesmerised by gun-toting, skimpy-outfit-wearing females with big booobs and I don't belong to that category.

snakes on a plane

No, this is not a movie review. The movie isn't out in Australia yet. This is just merely my thoughts on this movie or rather, the movie title. I read this article in The Age last Friday about this movie and how it's attracting a cult even before being released. I fail to see how on earth can anything with such a lame title attract any cult. Seriously, what is this movie about? It's a movie about snakes and they are on a plane. Duh!

What usually works for me is I see a movie title, I get curious, I go see it. This title doesn't make me curious. I don't like snakes, I don't love snakes and I think anything that has anything to do with planes is going to suck big time. Why don't I like planes in movie? Because any movie with a plane is going to have either a psychopath killing/kidnapping on a plane (example: red eye, flight plan) or it's gonna involve lamely executed emergency landing by an amateur or it's gonna involve some terrorist plot. No, planes are too lame. Snakes on plane are even lamer.

Why? Why would a few hundred snakes be on a plane? Why? I suppose I have to see the movie to know but really, there is no logical way to have a few hundred snakes on a passenger plane. Even if you can get a few hundred snakes on a passenger plane they would have been locked up, not crawling around biting people without being provoked first. What is the movie world coming to? What's next for us to see? Dinosaurs on a space station?

So what's the hell is in this movie to make it attract a cult? Maybe it's because of the fact that Samuel L. Jackson is in it. But then you have to admit that good actors sometime involve in really bad movies (example: Chalize Theoron - Aeon Flux; Angelina Jolie - Tomb raider) so you can't say that a movie that has SLJ is going to be fabulous. I don't care if he's the "epitome of cool" or not. I'm defintely NOT going to see this movie.

Bad parenting

blonde chick with hairy pussy

Hah, not what you're expecting, is it? Can't really sue me for misleading, can you? For all I know there is a blonde chick and a hairy pussy in that picture [evil laugh].

Holy cow, how did this happen?

I have a counter installed on my blog and that counter usually gives me very depressing news like "you have no hits, not even from your own mother". Just joking about the mother part, she doesn't know about this blog or about me being an atheist and I like to keep it that way. Telling her that would be like giving my neck to a hungry rattle snake. Not that I'm equating my own mother with a snake or anything. She's an extremely nice lady.
Ok, back to the main topic. My counter gives depressing news, especially after I neglected posting for 2 weeks. However, today the counter gives great news. Take a look at this.

That is the most hits I've got in one day since I started this blog. What's going on here?
That wasn't the only good news I've got from the counter today. My usual visitors are mainly from Australia, probably has something to do with me telling all my friends about my blog and them logging on almost everyday to read my boring rants. But today I've got this
Exactly, how exactly did American visitors take over? Last time I checked, US was trailing by 20%.

Blogger beta rocks!

If you're wondering what's the firetruck happens to my blog, stop wondering. I didn't do something stupid like mucking away at the template I wrote last year and forgot to save a backup template hence I had to stick with some lame highly unoriginal templates provided by Blogger. Nope, no such thing happened. It was just that I got offered a chance to try out Blogger Beta and jumped at it. Blogger Beta rocks.
Let's talk about the good points first:

• Labels, finally blogger has labels. I've been wanting labels for a while now and couldn't have the time to poke around some Blogger hacks to put labels on my blog. I tried to compensate for that by having a Wordpress mirror which is fully label supported. The problem with Wordpress is that it's too freaking slow, even at cable speed it was slow [or maybe it was just my rotten luck]. I don't really have to say anything about Wordpress on dialup, do I? It was excruciatingly slow.
• Super fast. Blogger Beta offers basically the same stuffs as Wordpress, with the exception of an in built counter however, Blogger Beta was fast, probably faster than the old blogger. Wordpress eats Blogger Beta's dirt.
• Customise is child's play. Yes, child's play. There are a few widgets available and customise backgrounds, fonts, font size, font colours are as easy as abc. I remember the pain I had to go through last year to customise my blog, this is just too easy.
• add links with ease. Adding links to the template in Blogger was a real pain in the ass. However, you can always use del.icio.us or blogrolling.com to reduce that pain. Blogger Beta offers a real cure for the pain. Just log in and post links away. I'm loving this.
  
• Heaps of new features like private blogs and invite only blogs. Frankly, these are the stuffs that I really don't care about hence the short paragraph. For more info click here

Now to the down points

• No counter yet. There's been some rumour about Google intergrating Measure Map into Blogger but so far, nothing yet.
• Can't edit HTML source code. I love my old template even though it was a bit dodgy. Especially my banner which I made personally. My old template was personalised, not just customised. HTML editing is "coming soon" but how soon is anyone's guess.

So that's it for the down points so far. Now I have to do some back tracking and post labels to all my old posts, that should take a while.

moronic overseas students

I never really intended to post anything about overseas students in general but I have had enough. Not that all overseas students are moronic, and not that all Australians students are intelligent either. It's just that an overseas student put that last tiny drop in my glass this morning so I'm gonna rant about moronic overseas students today. Someday I'm gonna do a post on the morons that can't stop yapping in lectures.

So what's with overseas students? Yeah, what's with them. They travel in packs of preferably the same nationality. They don't speak English when they're in their respective packs and they often speak loudly. I have no qualms about anyone speaking any languages. But I do have some qualms when it comes to speaking loudly and in a supposedly "quiet study area" in the library. Seriously. There're a dozen of signs telling people that it's quiet study area. But no people just talk and talk and talk there. It's like the quiet study area is for talking and not studying. I'm extremely irritated when it comes to that. However, overseas students just turn my irritation meter about 10 irritation units up. They talk loudly, that bit we've established, and they talk extra loudly when they're in their packs in the quiet study area. I'm extra irritated because I'm just curious what the heck they talk about so freaking loudly in a quiet study area anyway. Can't they just talk else where?

However, that wasn't the last drop. That was the first 1000 drops. The next thing I don't understand is overseas students and computers. They never turn on a computer all by themselves or something. That was exactly what happened this morning. I turned on a computer, endured the excrutinating 1 minute that it took to boot up and got online to find lecture materials. Found it, printed it out, went to the printer to get the print out and when I'm back some overseas dude was sitting at my freaking computer, the computer where I logged on and where my bag was LYING RIGHT NEXT TO, typing an email. Now that was the last drop. I'm gonna post this post and be done with my anger at moronic overseas students. Can't they just press the freaking button to turn on the CPU? I had to wait for 1 minute, one lousy minute to turn on that freaking computer and that dude just jumped right on it when I was away for 20 seconds, 20 FREAKING SECONDS. And it's not like there's a shortage of unoccupied computers, they just weren't turned on. Are these morons too moronic to comprehend how to press a freaking button?

So that's out, I must say I have no qualms with overseas students, they're good for the economy and all. I just can't stand the moronic ones. Actually, I can't stand any professional morons of any nationality, full stop.

some people just have weird hobbies

Truevil had to do this research thing last week on eating disorders for an oral presentation. The researching part wasn't bad. Truevil ran into some interesting information like the first few cases of Anorexia Nervosa was from some Christian Saints who over exercised, under-ate and as a result died young and very skinny. The first incidences of bulimia went, alledgedly, way back to the Roman empire. They, alledgedly, had "vomitoriums" in banquet halls so that patrons could make a pig of themselves, throw up then continue to make a pig of themselves. Anyway, this particular piece of information isn't very well supported.

So you're probably wondering what does my oral presentation has anything to do with weird hobbies. Well, when I was researching the credibility of "vomitorium" I came across a website by some dude who collects vomit pictures and coincedentally, his website is called "the vomitorium". Looking at those pictures alone will make you want to puke. Go there if you dare.

That's it for today, I was going to leave you with a gruesome picture of an Anorexia nervosa sufferer, however, it's very likely to be on this page for quite a while and frankly, that picture creeps me out. So I'll leave you with this picture instead. See how much ideal body shape can change in 20 years?

I'm back

That was the longest stretch of time I've gone without posting anything. This post is more like a guilt-ridden post. The type of posts that I usually don't have anything to say but I just post it anyway because my blog has been looking the same boring way for more 2 weeks.

So what was going on in the last 2 weeks? I honestly don't know! Weird isn't it? I remember I was very busy with something but I can't just tell what the heck that something was. Oh, yes, the psychology essay. Which I hate so much and was so glad to got it off my hand on Friday. As is always the case, I hate essays, especially my essay. It's just that when you write it you feel that it's extremely good. When you finish it, you feel even better. Then you reread it and the feeling of confidence just go swooshing out of you. First reread wasn't bad, it felt like I could fix it up with a few sentences here and there. Second reread was bad, it felt like I stuffed it up. Third reread was pathetic, I felt like tearing my essay into a hundred thousand pieces and stuff those pieces into the toilet. Unfortunately [or is it fortunately?], I didn't go with my feelings. I handed the pathetic essay in and have been feeling lousily about it ever since. No big deal.

That wasn't the only thing that went on during my 2 weeks desertion of this blog. However, that was the only thing that I can remember of. Let me see what else? Yes, I've got a PDA now. You might ask what the hell do I need a PDA for? Believe me, I've asked myself the same question. Strictly speaking, I didn't buy it and I bought it. How come? Well, my technologically challenged sister suddenly had this wonderful thought of purchasing a PDA and a foldable keyboard [which is extremely cool] to type notes during her lectures. So she bought it, brought it home, played with it for 2 hours and then came to my room and gave me the damn thing. She didn't like it one bit! I could use some organizing with my life, I thought at the time. What I've been using the PDA for was quite embarassing really. It hasn't helped a whole lot with organising, more like disorganising my life. I've been using it to play Solitaire, which is time consuming, and has no educational value whatsoever.

So that's it for this post. I'm 2 issues behind with the weird blog series and I'll make up for it when I have time.