(no subject)

[apocalypsos]

The more I see the story about Hilary Swank having to pay for bringing fruit into New Zealand, the more annoyed I get. The woman probably has pairs of shoes that cost less than that, and hell, I could pay that fine. And right now, I have a buck and a half in my pocket.

As her parents lay mortally wounded, a 5-year-old girl called 911, telling an emergency dispatcher, "I think they're dead." Oh, that poor little girl.

Belgian trainers helping police to understand body language have caused a controversy by likening George Bush's facial expressions to a chimpanzee's. Look, like him or not, the man looks like a chimp. If more people liked him, it'd be endearing and cute. Since they don't, it's an insult. Sheesh.

Plasticized fetus stolen from exhibition -- EW.

A Shanghai online game player stabbed to death a competitor who sold his cyber-sword, the China Daily said Wednesday, creating a dilemma in China where no law exists for the ownership of virtual weapons. Now that's taking the gaming a wee bit far.

A woman rushing to a hospital to give birth hit a few stops along the way — first at a gas station where she delivered the baby herself, then when confused police ordered her out of the car at gunpoint. Okay, I'm definitely not complaining about having a bad day anytime soon. It can't possibly compare to that.

Harry Knowles reviews Sahara. I really, really want to see Sahara. I don't know why, since I can see Matthew McConnaughey be pretty at home with my DVDs, but the trailer amuses me.

The TWoP recaplet for this week's double episode of The Amazing Race. Reading that makes me happy. Especially the ending. :)

A Vatican cardinal denounced the death Thursday of Terri Schiavo, saying removing the feeding tube that was keeping her alive was "an attack against God." Oh, for Pete's sake.

Comments

Re: God's bleeding from the eyes at his minions.

[budclare.livejournal.com]

Well, by that logic, I still believe that God wouldn't have put her into a vegetative state.

While there are cases in which I could sympathize with that argument (but not 100% argee with it), I think that it's problematic in this case. While I was in favor of letting her die, realistically, it didn't matter to her one way or the other. Because she wasn't aware, regardless of what her family believed, so technically she could have existed in that state for another 50 years without suffering any harm. Had she been aware, then she'd be suffering.

So if we assume (for the purposes of this argument) that some sort of god exists, and if we accept that Terri wasn't really affected by either course of action, then the real point of the whole exercise (again, assuming that there was a point) was the way that everyone else reacted to the situation. Which most religious people would probably agree with, except they'd then go on to insist that they were on the right side and the rest of us weren't. Which assumes that there was a right side and a wrong side, of which there is no proof, even assuming that there is a god. From where I'm sitting, there were people on both sides of the issue who were "right" and people on both sides who were "wrong".

Anyway, my original point was that you were using a false dichotomy (likely in addition to other fallacies), which is something that religious people frequently do, which is why from a logical standpoint I often have trouble differentiating between religious people and atheists. Bad logic is bad logic, regardless of what you're trying to prove with it.

Re: God's bleeding from the eyes at his minions.

[channonyarrow.livejournal.com]

I agree that there were people on both sides who were right and wrong. My objection was to the ones who were using her to further a cause that she may or may not have supported in her aware life.

But I'll accept that the dichotomy was false. For the sake of simplicity (and a state of rage at people using this person), I defined it poorly.