Glittering Flaming Con Man for Christ!

Joshua Mills claims he sweats supernatural oil and gold dust:
https://web.archive.org/web/20111012050409/http://unreasonablefaith.com/2011/07/21/glittering-miracle/

His web site is a riot:

Joshua Mills "about" page

During his services signs and wonders are commonplace with manifestations of supernatural oil and gold dust, creative healings, supernatural weight-loss, financial miracles, Angelic visitation and heavenly encounters.

Check out Joshua's head shot on the link above. The only way he could be more flaming would be to have a "Friend of Dorothy" pin on an ascot and a cardboard cutout of Margaret Cho in the background.

And he loves male angels.
http://churchwarnings.blogspot.com/2008/07/joshua-mills-angels-dripping-oil-manna.html

Joshua Mills also sings!
http://www.myspace.com/joshuamillsmusic

Oh, and he talks about miraculous teeth whitening. That's right, Jesus will give you white teeth: Xpmedia: Teeth whitening Joshua Mills

http://slaughteringthesheep.wordpress.com/2010/03/25/joshua-mills-teeth-whitening-miracle/

Apparently Mr. Mills decided the feather from "Forest Gump" was a message from God:
http://www.therisinglight.com/tag/joshua-mills/

Do people actually take loons like this seriously? Please tell me the guy from Borat or a similar comedy performance artist is behind this. The idea that people are actually dumb enough to fall for such a shoddy, obvious act is too depressing to contemplate.

Is Stacey Campfield Gay?

All joking about Stacey Campfield's flaming appearance aside, there is some speculation about the sex life of the driving force behind Tennessee's "don't say 'Gay'" bill.

First, there's Stacey Campfield apparent terror of homosexuals. There's no rational basis for banning Tennessee teachers from mentioning homosexuality aside from blatant fear mongering. Most of the people I've met who oppose discussion of homosexuality seem to think merely talking about it will trigger a rush of man-on-man orgies in the classroom. This attitude is perplexing to me. If someone I do not want to have sex with propositions me with a sex act I find repugnant, I'm not going to dive in and engage in it no matter what sweet nothings the person mutters. The idea of "enticing" an allegedly straight person into a homosexual act is absurd. No one who is completely straight is going to have sex with someone of their own gender. The only way a man can seduce another man with sweet nothings or lewd suggestions is if the "straight" man is at least a little gay.

Being a gay man who is attacking the rights of homosexuals would be incredibly hypocritical, but Stacey Campfield is no stranger to hypocrisy or at least profound contradictions.

The article What the Heck is Wrong With Stacey Campfield? points out:

it is hard to escape the contradictions underlying his geniality. He is a family-values conservative who has never married, a fathers’ rights advocate with no children, a professed preservationist who has been cited by the city for property neglect and sued by his tenants (though he is quick to point out that he has also won a suit of his own against a tenant), an advocate for education who litters his blog with spelling and grammatical errors, and a legislator who rarely manages to get his own legislation out of committee. He proposes bills more likely to generate headlines than laws.

So if he's gay, how did he become a Republican? In his own words:

I was very much just more of a fiscal conservative and really the social issues weren’t as key to me as the fiscal side was. But after I got up there, the more I studied and the more I looked at stuff, the more I realized that social issues have huge impacts on the fiscal issues. You can go down through it, you can say, unwed parenthood or something like that, that’s somebody else’s problem. Well, it is until they need social services or they need something else.

That sounds a bit like how the average Log Cabin Republican gravitated towards the GOP. The problem is the Tea Party era GOP makes it hard to be a fiscal conservative and a social progressive / moderate. That puts you in something of an outsider position. Campfield appears to have that very kind of an outsider position in the GOP. He was cut from the Republican governor's news mailing list.

We have a man pursuing a homophobic agenda, in a political party known for the wide stance problem of closeted homosexuals, who isn't married and has no children. He appears to be on the track to marginalization within the GOP despite the success of his "Don't say Gay" bill".

Oh, and Campfield appears to assume most women are sluts.

Check out the tinycatpants article linked above. It sounds like Campfield appears to think women are trolling the Earth, seeking men to shag briefly in order to bind them into paying for a child that may or may not be his. It's a bit paranoid but professing such a fear would allow a closeted homosexual to offer a token explanation for why he doesn't have a girlfriend. Animosity towards women doesn't mean you're gay*, but the Republicans are the ones who often claim that Lesbians are "Man Haters." It's another red flag.

None of this of course constitutes proof that Stacey Campfield is gay. It's all speculative to circumstantial at best. There are a lot of red flags but as the jury in the Casey Anthony murder trial could attest, numerous red flags don't necessarily constitute solid evidence.

Is Stacey Campfield gay? No one knows, but I doubt anyone would be surprised if he were caught demonstrating a wide stance or exploring Santorum in a private bath house.

* OK, using Rush Limbaugh, the guy who was caught smuggling illegal Viagra on an "All Boy's Fishing Trip", may not have been the best example to use when claiming animosity towards women isn't necessarily an indicator of homosexuality.

Tennessee

Where they think banning the word "Gay" will make Stacey Campfield less flaming.

Where, exactly are his eyes directed while he's holding up that sticker?

Yes, he's still a creep

The Billboard Douche has been ordered to take down his billboard.

Normally a BarMitzvah has kosher food

A Jewish friend has commented on the fact that Max Ultimate Food has a very, er, flexible definition of what constitutes appropriate food for Bar & Bat Mitzvahs. Their highly inappropriate sample menu includes things like burgers with cheese, lobster and crab. The pigs in a blanket are iffy, as it's conceivable they're made with all beef franks and no cheese, but given the colossal lack of clue in the rest of the menu I'd be inclined to doubt it.

My commented screen capture is below. Please forgive any rough edges, as I had to stitch it together from multiple screen shots. I do not have a graphic designer's screen.

UPDATE:
A friend pointed out that I missed the prosciutto in the "First Course" when marking up the image.

Killed Someone? Let God Cover For You! | The American Jesus

Killed Someone? Let God Cover For You! | The American Jesus

This is GREAT NEWS for prosecutors who are finding their death row cases overturned by DNA evidence. If they can prove the inmate probably "Found Jesus" after committing the crime then they can argue that a DNA mismatch is to be EXPECTED and proves NOTHING about the innocence of the people on death row. A DNA match on the other hand, proves the prisoner never REALLY converted and thus deserves to be executed even sooner.

You heard it here, unbelievers. Converting can CHANGE YOUR DNA! We’ll all go out and knock over some convenience stores, leave lots of hair and skin samples behind, then have a “genuine born-again experience” and change our DNA. It’s the perfect crime!

I will have to brew a batch of this

FARK.com: (6285506) Gueuze: complex, funky, idiosyncratic, multifaceted, pungent, satisfying, intense, crisp, dry, acidic, refreshing, tart, fruity, oaky, sour, musty, vinous, lemony, strawlike, cidery, grassy, haylike. That's an awful lot of words for beer

Not the way to get your kid to sleep

Not the way to get your kid to sleep
Originally uploaded by flakingnapstich

Not the way to get your kid to sleep

Caleb and the raven

Caleb and the raven
Originally uploaded by flakingnapstich

Caleb and the raven

Kirk Cameron's manager sent a threatening letter about this photo

Warning: Criticizing washed up, has been actor Kirk Cameron for mocking a man with a terminal illness and using a silly photo of Kirk Cameron to do it will get you threatening letters from Kirk Cameron's manager Mark Craig.

Kirk Cameron is an asshole, and so is his manager Mark Craig.

Imbibing quarts of bathtub gin

Make: Online | How to Make Your Own Gin Without a Still
I've been making my own gin by steeping juniper berries. I'm looking forward to trying this recipe. All I need is some 100 proof vodka.

Measles Outbreak In Europe, Especially France

"Oh, but they won't sell as many vaccines that way. Never mind, then... "

The profit on a singe vaccinatio­n is about 10 to 25 cents. The cost of a single measles case can be thousands of dollars. If "big pharma" really was determined to make people sick to profit from it, they'd be doing everything they could to NOT vaccinate.

But hey, you stick with the naive belief that a merciless profit motive is driving them to turn away billions from treating measles, whooping cough and polio in order to scrape together a relative pittance from vaccinatio­n. I'm going to invest in "big pharma" stock. The anti-vax movement is going to be making money for them hand over fist in the next few years.
About Personal Health
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

SA rapture man apologises

SA rapture man apologises: "The SA follower of the US evangelist who predicted the end of the world is being ridiculed, but still believes the end will come on October 21."

This man spent $140,000 of his life savings on billboards promoting Harold Camping's absurd May 21, 2011 Rapture date. Now he has bought into Camping's wild claims of an "invisible" or "spiritual" judgment, as if Camping had any credibility left. It's "Sunk cost" thinking at its finest.

How convenient for Camping that the May 21 event turned out to be something vague, undefined and supernatural with no detectable evidence in the real world.

Con Man Camping Still at it

Harold Camping has been manipulating his followers for decades with false promises of an imminent Rapture. His repeated date predictions have all failed and now the false prophet has defended the failure of his much trumpeted May 21 date with another blast of shoddy rationalization, claiming that the world will now end in five months. As one critic commented "Third time's the charm."

The general idea seems to be that some sort of vague spiritual event occurred on May 21, and the five months of tribulation Camping predicted will instead be skipped as an act of divine mercy. The October 21 date he picked for the actual destruction of the Earth still stands. He's claiming he was just wrong about the Rapture happening on May 21.

So what happened on the 21st?

"We've always said October 21 was the day," Camping said during his show. "The only thing we didn't understand was the spirituality of May 21. We're seeing this as a spiritual thing happening rather than a physical thing happening. The timing, the structure, the proofs, none of that has changed at all."

Ahh, vague spiritual BS. That's what happened. It's like talking to a psychic or ghost hunter. Let's do some more digging to see if Camping elaborates:

Saturday was "an invisible judgment day" in which a spiritual judgment took place, he said. But the timing and the structure is the same as it has always been, he said.
"We’ve always said May 21 was the day, but we didn’t understand altogether the spiritual meaning," he said. "May 21 is the day that Christ came and put the world under judgment."

What, pray tell, is "an invisible judgment day" supposed to be? Does this mean God has randomly decided to just skip the bulk of the nasty, horrible things predicted in the Bible? Fark commentators take a stab at explaining Camping's "Invisible Judgment Day"(tm) and end up doing a better job illuminating the issue than Camping himself.

In the mean time, Camping's ministry has whitewashed the Family Radio Web site, scrubbing it of all mention of the failed May 21 prediction. It's a very Orwellian memory hole.

Bob Hansen, one of the poor fools who were promoting the idiotic May 21 date, granted an interview to discuss his reaction to the failed prediction. It's a very depressing example of "Sunk Cost" thinking. People who have invested a good deal of their time and resources, often burning bridges with  friends and family, have trouble accepting evidence that all their effort and sacrifice was wasted. Instead of admitting they were wrong and trying to make amends, they instead rationalize their decisions and try to find ways to excuse the failure that should have forced them to realize they'd been misled. This is the same psychological phenomena that keeps people trapped in Multi-Level-Marketing scams and Pyramid schemes.


PZ Myers has his own take on the matter that includes a lot of interesting links and a general condemnation of religion as a whole.

Then there's a chilling quote from Camping:

I don't have any responsibility. I'm only teaching the Bible. I'm telling ... this is what the Bible says. I don't have spiritual rule over anybody ... except my wife as the head of the household.

Given such control over his wife, it's no surprise that instead of leaving the fraud, she's instead said she's "a little bewildered" at the complete and utter failure of is prediction. Apparently she's been wallowing in the false prophet's nonsense for too long to see clearly anymore. That, or she's afraid of him. He is pretty old school in many of his Bible interpretations.I wouldn't be surprise if he used a literal rod to beat his wife and children when they disobeyed.

The really chilling part of the quote is how Camping washes his hands of all responsibility for what's happened. It doesn't matter that it was his web of lies that ruined so many people financially and rent so many families asunder. Camping apparently believes it's THEIR fault for believing him. I wonder how many con artists use the same logic to absolve themselves of responsibility for cheating lonely old widows out of their savings.

In all of this only one group is really coming forward to try and help the people who were fooled by Camping. Atheist to Rapture Victims: You're Not Stupid. Funny how a group that's usually stigmatized by the religious is reaching out, while Camping is desperately trying to extend his exploitation of these people for another few months. Fark commentators disagree with the claim that Canning's followers aren't stupid.

I wonder what Jesus would think of this whole affair.

Most Annoying

Dear nature. The cold weather and rain is hampering my efforts to smoke my annual spring cigar.

Camping's Crazies

I think Camping's Crazies are planning a mass suicide or terrorist act for May 21. Watch the news. Some of these jokers are probably going to try to bring about the end times with some acts of their own. They'll consider it an act of mercy, sparing the "Left Behind" from months of misery by ending their lives just before the Rapture. I'll bet a few even plan to use a terrorist act to scare people into last second repentance. Remember, these jokers believe that there will be no additional salvation after the Rapture, so anyone "Left Behind" will be screwed. If however they can scare people into repenting at the last second, getting in just under the wire so to speak, BOOM! A saved soul!

Beginner books for brewing beer

While most brewing books have an obligatory "How to brew" chapter, there are two primary beginner texts for homebrewers.

How to Brew: Everything You Need To Know To Brew Beer Right The First Time

The Complete Joy of Homebrewing Third Edition. It's best read with the companion volume The Homebrewer's Companion

While they both cover a lot of the same information, they have two distinct approaches. Papazian takes a far more artistic, poetic tack. In one of his books, he waxes poetic about a Prickly Pear Mead and how he brews a batch every year. He buries a few bottles at the top of a nearby mountain to be aged by nature.

Palmer takes a more scientific approach and gets to the nuts and bolts.

You get pretty much the same information from both books, with the main difference being the writing style and organization.

I subscribe to two brewing magazines. Zymurgy, edited by Papazian, reflects his attitude towards brewing, while "Brew Your Own" reflects a more Palmer oriented approach, including a series of articles scientifically testing various homebrew traditions and urban legends.

SEO, it's Not Black Magic

Spin, spin, spin, for many firms it's all about the spin. Overblown claims are common on the Internet, especially when dealing with the touchy issue of Search Engine ranking.  The perception is that the better a site fares in Search Engine rankings the more money the associated business / charity / whatever will make. Many firms exploit this perception by making wild promises about how they'll boost your ranking in various search engines.

More is not better

The House Rabbit Network (HRN) is a New England based animal rescue group. Their web site, rabbitnetwork.org gets a lot of traffic from people seeking information about keeping rabbits as pets. Starting in 2007, they started getting traffic from a new and unexpected source. "Adult" search terms started directing people to rabbitnetwork.org.  It didn't take long for the webmaster to figure out what was going on.

The HRN web site had recently added "How to Sex Your Rabbits", an article about determining the gender of a rabbit. It's one of the better online articles on the topic and a lot of other rabbit related sites were already linking to it. The large number of links to the article gave it a higher Google page rank. The text contained phrases like "bunny" and "sex" which caused people seeking, er, "mature" content to be directed to the site. To make matters worse, people began posting the URL to adult themed forums.

From the view of many SEO "experts" this was a grand success. The site was getting more traffic from a larger and more diverse audience. From the view of the rescue group, this was an annoyance.  The increased traffic didn't negatively impact server performance or increase bandwidth costs, but it didn't result in people donating to the 501(c)3 registered charity or increase rabbit adoptions from HRN's foster homes.

People who stumbled across the site while searching for mature content weren't interested in a pet rabbit.

Misdirection to kill a campaign

In February 2008, the UK chain Marks & Spencer was engaged in a battle with the British union "Unite." As part of the conflict, Unite chose to engage in what they called "cyber-warfare." While the article was light on details, the union was probably spending £500 on Google Adwords.  The trouble hit when someone posted the article to the news aggregation site digg.com with the headline "Union to hijack global search engine - Google!." The headline depicted the relatively straightforward purchase of some paid search results as a form of black hat hacking. As a result, a large number of digg.com members searched for "Marks & Spencer" on Google, clicked the link to the Union grievances and then went back to digg.com to ask "Who the heck is Marks & Spencer?"

In short order the £500 had been burned up and searches for "Marks & Spencer" no longer resulted in an ad directing people to Unite's grievances page. A lot of people saw the ad, but few of them knew who Marks & Spencer was. As a result, the campaign had little effect on Marks & Spencer's bottom line.

The relatively low cost of advertising in search results may level the playing field a bit, but if a competitor can burn up your paid clicks it won't benefit you very much. Did the digg.com link help Unite's campaign? Not really.  Many of the paid search results went to people who had no involvement in the battle between Unite and M&S. Unite would have fared better if they'd not spoken to the press about the campaign.

Better means people want to go there

In both these example, the traditional "More is Better" SEO criteria was met. Both HRN and Unite got more traffic and more attention. From a practical standpoint, neither of them benefited.  Unite's money was burned up serving ads to people who didn't even recognize the name "Marks & Spencer". HRN didn't place any more rabbits.

The most useful image on the Internet

Upon reflection I think this image may be the most useful one to be found online at the moment. It has so many applications.

What we always suspected

trump.gif

One Soul Thrust still claiming to have been pirated

One Soul Thrust, the unknown band whose manager Cameron Tilbury used advertisements to claim they'd achieved "Pirate Platinum status" has scrubbed their twitter feed of mention of the debacle. They still have a blog up yammering about their fictional downloads.

We've recently found out that our debut cd "1ST" has gone beyond platinum status!! While this is cause for SERIOUS celebration,yes indeed, its extremely bittersweet since almost all of these "sales" weren't sales. It was illegal downloads

As anyone following the band or their manager knows, the above simply isn't true. No one downloaded One Soul Thrust. Their manager, through incompetence or deliberate deception, made the claim based upon dodgy advertisements and nothing more. He didn't even verify the files were available online. This can be said with confidence because if he HAD tried to download the files to verify the authenticity of the ads, he'd have learned the files did not exist.

Despite this, One Soul thrust feels compelled to opine on their fictional victimization by pirates who don't exist:

Downloading music illegally is wrong. It's theft; no different than stealing off the racks at HMV. It hurts ALOT of people.

You know what else hurts people One Soul Thrust? Accusing innocent people of theft, which is exactly what you and your manger have done. I would venture to guess that accusing an innocent person of stealing from you does more harm than downloading an MP3 off a pirate web site.

On a final note, cashboxcanada.ca still has a link to the debunked claims of piracy on their web site's front page. It says a lot about cashboxcanada.ca's lack of integrity that they're still promoting an article that's been ripped to shreds and shown to be based upon bad data. Are they lazy and incompetent, or do they simply not care if piracy claims are true or not?

Regardless, I'll use the exact same standard of evidence employed to support their article to do some research of my own. By their own standard of evidence the following MUST be a real, heavily traded video:

"Cashboxcanada.ca shareholder meeting child sacrafice to Pan"

Shocking! Human sacrifices to a pagan deity! I wonder if the artists associated with this degenerate outfit know about this? Remember folks, the claim that Cashboxcanada.ca engages in human sacrifice at shareholder meetings is supported by just as much evidence as the claim that One Soul Thrust was the victim of piracy in the first few months of 2011.

Brandon, MS P0wned by WBC, still think they won

According to blackfive.net's take on a quote from a Mississippi message board Brandon, Mississippi "defeated" the WBC. The problem with their rather naive take on the matter is that they played right into the hands of the WBC cult, giving them exactly what they want. Clearly some government affiliated idiots in Brandon thought spewing hate is the goal of the WBC. It's not. The WBC's goal is to sue, sue, sue. The police in Brandon Mississippi just made the WBC's job very, very easy.

The Phelps clan was running their usual act. Find the funeral of a dead soldier and do their best to piss off as many people as possible. It's claimed that most of the WBC income is the result of first amendment and civil rights lawsuits filed against the people, particularly the local governments, that try to silence them. Apparently knowing NOTHING about the WBC other than their tendency to protest the funerals of soldiers resulted in this response:

The Oxford Square

They did show up, a few showed up a couple of days early.

A couple of days before, one of them ran his mouth at a Brandon gas station and got his ass waxed. Police were called and the beaten man could not give much of a description of who beat him. When they canvassed the station and spoke to the large crowd that had gathered around, no one seemed to remember anything about what had happened.

Rankin County handled this thing perfectly. There were many things that were put into place that most will never know about and at great expense to the county. Most of the morons never made it out of their hotel parking lot. It seems that certain Rankin county pickup trucks were parked directly behind any car that had Kansas plates in the hotel parking lot and the drivers mysteriously disappeared until after the funeral was over.

Police were called but their wrecker service was running behind and it was going to be a few hours before they could tow the trucks so the Kansas plated cars could get out. A few made it to the funeral but were ushered away to be questioned about a crime they might have possibly been involved in. Turns out, after a few hours of questioning, that they were not involved and they were allowed to go on about their business.

Ranking deserves a hand in how they handled this situation.

Brandon, Mississippi can probably expect a number of lawsuits to be filed by the WBC family, most of whom are lawyers. The article linked by the OP might end up part of the filing as proof of a conspiracy to suppress the first amendment rights of the Phelps cult.

Using government resources to violate the rights of jackasses is a piss-poor way to honor a soldier who died ostensibly defending those rights. It's a shame Rankin County didn't dedicate more resources to civics classes. After the WBC clan is done with them they probably won't be able to afford to keep the schools open.

How did the poster on blackfive.net describe the events that placed an entire town at the mercy of Fred Phelps?

Sometimes, when all else has fails, you need the good old boys to get things done. Hats off to the patriots of Rankin, Mississippi!

I HATE it when the WBC wins. I HATE it when those WBC jackasses get exactly what they want handed to them on a silver platter. The town's only hope now is for the tale to either be a complete fabrication or for the WBC to decide there isn't enough money in the county to justify a lawsuit.

NZ to Throw People into an Internet Memoy Hole

New Zealand has passed a law that purports to allow copyright holders to more easily cut off the Internet connection of Intellectual Property pirates.

There's a dark side to the law however, aside from the fact that technical issues make the New Zealand law useless or at the very least guarantees a lot of innocent bystanders will be caught in the digital crossfire. The law effectively allows anyone with the time and money to file a few dodgy complaints to cut off the Internet connection for a household or business.

If the entirety of the law goes into effect due process is pretty much eliminated and anyone can be kicked off the Internet based upon a few complaints. One guy who knows how to use a proxy server could file a few complaints and get an entire household's Internet connection cut. Is there a NZ blogger who ticked you off? File some dubious file sharing complaints and you can get him and his entire family cut off in one fell swoop. Is a competitor cutting into your profits? File some complaints and they'll lose their Internet connection. Don't like the review someone wrote of your business? Cut off their Internet connection.

Once cut off, getting back on can be a dicey proposition. Employers wouldn't be happy with their Internet connection being jeopardized by a blogger employee, so continuing whatever political or business blogging that got your home connection severed during your lunch break may just get you fired. If you work from home your business and personal connection is dead. All it takes to cut off a family or business in New Zealand will be one person willing to lie about Internet Piracy. Folks like that aren't exactly difficult to find.

Cameron Tilbury and Salem Jones The Bareback Gift Giver

Whoa Nellie! What have we here:

Cameron Tilbury and Salem Jones The Bareback Gift Giver

THAT'S a weird title. According to LimeTorrent it's just as popular as One Soul Thrust's debut album. Can anyone translate that movie title for me?

Cameron Tilbury only needed a month to destroy One Soul Thrust

It turns out One Soul Thrust, the band that has been humiliated online by the incompetence and dishonesty of Cameron Tilbury only signed with him in February of 2011.

20 February 2011
One Soul Thrust Unveils New Management

Rock band One Soul Thrust has just signed a management deal with Cameron Tilbury Publicity in the United Kingdom.

...

"We were introduced to Cameron through Nashville vocal coach Judy Rodman," says One Soul Thrust's lead singer/songwriter Salem Jones. "He started getting our music out to international radio and doing our publicity. but he was also talking to booking agents, promoters and other people. We soon realized that he was doing a lot of what we wanted in a manager. Since our focus is international and our producer is based in Europe, we wanted an international manager. It just seemed like a good fit. We simply love C."

One Soul Thrust is fronted by lead vocalist/songwriter Salem Jones. Add drummer Todd Pretty, guitarist Jag Mollerup, bassist Trent Morley, and you have the core members of what one US journalist called "one of Canada's best-kept secrets."

...

Cameron Tilbury is a native of Ancaster, Ontario, Canada and a former Canadian radio announcer/writer (820 CHAM, KX96, Q107, CHFI). He has worked at advertising agencies in Nottingham, Peterborough, Maidstone and London in the UK. Cameron Tilbury Publicity was founded in 2010 in Peterborough, Cambridgeshire--about 85 miles north of London--and is currently handling international radio promo and publicity for some of North America's best up-and-coming talent.

For information: info@onesoulthrust.com, cameron@camerontilburypublicity.com

By the first week of April, 2011, you couldn't look up information on the band without getting results about One Soul Thrust's manager feeding them bad information. In a little over a month, he turned them into an Internet joke.

Around April 3 and 4, the band and the manager posted some statements in their defense, but by April 8, the relevant posts on Tilbury's site were gone. Apparently he thought better of continuing to claim 100,000 pirate downloads when there were really none. Instead of admitting his mistake, he's decided to delete his comments and hope everyone just forgets he screwed up and was an ass about it. Given the short attention span of the Internet that strategy might actually work. Unless of course people keep linking to articles about this incident using his name and the band's name. Unless he admits his mistake and eats some humble pie, the odds are good his incompetence will continue to be one of the top things people learn about when they look him up online.

George Takei auditions for the role of Spiderman

There's the old D&D joke that Sean Connery reached "Epic" level in the 1990's and "stopped leveling." This is usually supported by photos showing how little he has aged in the last few decades.

Clearly, George Takei got the "Epic Level" rule book so he could keep leveling, even after achieving Epic Status.

In programming terms:
GeorgeTakei = Epic +1;

Every few months:
GeorgeTakei ++;




All joking aside, letting him retool the show into a comedic vehicle could work nicely. It might even, dare I say, save a failing production!

Salem Jones probably flunked all his math classes

It takes a special kind of stupid to not be able to tell the difference between 0 and 100,000.

'While I question the exact precision of these numbers--pirates are dishonest by nature--it appears they reflect a strong enough version of reality to bring a serious issue to light.' - One Soul Thrust's lead vocalist Salem Jones, on the fact that his band is claiming their album has been pirated 1000,00 times when it's not even available on any piracy sites.

Switched.com has the best headline for this fiasco: Obscure Canadian Band Mistakes Spam for 100K Illegal Downloads

Imageshack has an example of the spam that fooled Salem Jones.

Cameron Tilbury, a lying SOB?

Until a few weeks ago, Cameron Tilbury'S main claim to fame was being a lackluster music manager and a somewhat psychotic looking Gordon Ramsay look-a-like. Now he's becoming known as a "special needs" individual who can't tell an advertisement from actual search results.

In my recent post Cameron Tilbury vs One Soul Thrust, I outlined how Cameron Tilbury used advertisements that auto-populated with your search results to claim that the debut album of the band One Soul Thrust had been downloaded about 100,000 times. If you actually try to download any of those files you learn something interesting. They don't exist. There are no copies of One Soul Thrust's album available on any illicit file sharing sites.

Cameron Tilbury's piracy claims are not true.

I wondered if he was deliberately lying or just an incompetent moron, incapable of telling the difference between and advertisement and actual search results. Was he also desperately trying to collect on his million pound Yahoo Lottery prize while feverishly corresponding with Nigerian prices desperate to get their money out of the country, giving him an eight figure cut in the process?

Tilbury's recent response to this mess has convinced me he is deliberately lying. I won't do the scumbag Cameron Tilbury the service of linking to his site. Instead I'll link to The Mad Hatter's response to Cameron Tilbury's dishonesty. I highly recommend reading it. The Mad Hatter's article, like my earlier one, uses absurd search criteria to demonstrate the idiocy and nonsensical nature of Cameron Tilbury's claims.

This is Cameron's money quote:

Sure enough, it would appear that not only are the downloads on pirate sites illegal, but their numbers are pretty shady too.

At no point does he admit that his piracy claims are fraudulent. He just weasels out and says the numbers my be off a bit. His excuse isn't completely off base. There's a substantial difference between ZERO downloads, which is what One Soul Thrust has experienced and the 1000,000 downloads Cameron Tilbury claims. That would fall under the criteria of "their numbers are pretty shady too." By refusing to admit that there are no actual incidents of One Soul Thrust being pirated he is engaging in what can be termed "deception by omission." Specifically he's leaving out the critical point that his claims are complete balderdash.

I would advise anyone thinking of doing business with Cameron Tilbury to seriously reconsider associating with him. If his handling of this debacle is any indication, then stretching the truth or even flat out lying are part of his business toolkit. It may seem like a good thing to have a dishonest bastard on your side, but lying bastards have a tendency to turn on you. Do you REALLY want to be in a contract dispute with someone as apparently dishonest as Cameron Tilbury?

If you have an existing relationship with Cameron Tilbury, get out as fast as you can, unless you like knowing that you can never trust a word that comes out of his mouth.

Where will Tilbury go from here? I suspect he'll try to cast this debate as a general piracy issue, distancing himself from his debunked claims. Instead of addressing the falsified nature of his 100,000 downloads number, he'll steer the conversation away from his specific incompetence and dishonesty towards a general attack on piracy. Anyone who calls him out on continuing to lie about the One Soul Touch piracy numbers will be lumped in with anyone who advocates piracy.

Cameron Tilbury vs One Soul Thrust

Cameron Tilbury is the manager for a band named "One Soul Thrust", and I feel sorry for the band.

In April of 2011, Tilbury broke the news that One Soul Thrust's debut album had been downloaded illegally over 100,000 times. A small band was being decimated by piracy. They'd gone Pirate-Platinum despite being an obscure band whose one youtube video had less than 80 views. I have videos of my toddler online that have more views than that.

The claim that a band with no real Internet presence could have racked up 100,000 illegal downloads was a red flag to a number of people. After some due diligence it turned out that the claims of One Soul Thrust having 100,000 illegal downloads were complete and bull. Cameron Tilbury, the man claiming there have been 100,000 illegal downloads has released his "evidence", which consists of a screen shot of an advertisement. TorrentFreak details the story in their article CRIA Watches Massive Music Piracy Crisis Devastate Unknown Band. Specifically, the ad is for LimeTorrents, a site that uses your search terms to make up fictional torrents with massive download rates in order to get you to click on the link.

The article One Soul Thrust – Who Is Lying To Them reveals that the album isn't even on Gnutella.

Tilbury however hasn't admitted his mistake,. Far from it. He's defending his position on the Balanced Copyright For Canada Facebook wall.

He's even being a jackass about it. For example, Trent Morley pointed out that Tilbury was responding to requests for supporting evidence with name calling Tilbury wrote:

Cameron Tilbury: So are you Trent. I've substantiated our claims to real journalists, not silly little bloggers who hide behind cute names. Nice loyalty on your part, I have to say. Class.

All anyone has had to do is contact me directly. The only ones who ha...ve done that are legit journalists and CRIS. I will not condutct this the way you kids want to play. Grow up."

If that's the case then it should be fairly simple for Tilbury to provide the same evidence to bloggers. Based on the Google results for the band's name bloggers are the primary people writing about this anyway. Deliberately excluding the people who are providing the most information on the issue only guarantees their version will dominate the conversation.

The fact-checking articles I've linked above make it pretty clear that no such torrent actually exists. The question becomes not one of if the piracy is occurring, it's not, but one of motive. Is Cameron Tilbury malevolent and trying to use this to get press attention or is he merely incompetent? He's clearly failed the band in his efforts to promote them. Is this an attempt to excuse his failure to get the band more paying gigs? Is he actually foolish enough to think no one would research his claims? Is he deliberately trying to make a fool of himself online to promote the band?

Tilbury's response on his web site is vacuous to say the least. He never admits that the download figures were based on bad information. He seems downright offended that anyone is even asking him for evidence. In the end his post devolves into an anti-piracy rant, never mentioning the white elephant in the room: The Piracy he's claiming happened to One Soul Thrust did not happen.

It's pretty clear One Soul Thrust needs a new manager. He's technologically incompetent and his management of this debacle is proving a complete inability to understand the relevance of the Internet in marketing the band. There are a lot of graceful ways he could have handled this and benefited his client but they all entail admitting he was wrong. A bigger man could do that. Cameron Tilbury however, does not appear to be a big enough man to admit a mistake.

Now, just for fun, here are some other torrent search results that claim far more downloads than are feasible. Keep in mind, none of these files actually exist, but the images below constitute the same level of evidence that Tilbury provided to TorrentFreak to support his claims of piracy. His screen shots showed download counts similar to the ones in the screen shots below. He appears to have gotten his 100,000 number by totaling the results. This means if the information Cameron Tilbury has released about One Soul Thrust is proof of massive piracy, then Cameron Tilbury is a piracy-platinum blue movie star.

Cameron Tilbury Dealing with constipation audio book

Cameron Tilbury Gay Sex Tape

Cameron Tilbury on the Nixon Tapes

Cameron Tilbury Murder Conviction read in court

To the best of my knowledge, Cameron Tilbury has never starred in a gay sex movie, written a book about constipation or been convicted of murder, but his own standard of evidence, screen shots from dodgy torrent search sites, would suggest otherwise.

I doubt he ever shagged Chris Crocker either: Cameron Tilbury caught in bed with Chris Crocker

Treehugger is the place to go for BS science news

Based upon the drivel in their article "Could a Link Exist Between Super Moons and Erupting Volcanoes?" it's probably a safe bet that treehugger.com's science editor was dropped on their head a few times as a child.

The article features Donna O'Meara writing about Stephen James O'Meara. Gee, wonder why they have the same last name... The article is a fawning love letter to Stephen O'Meara that makes passing mention of him having a theory, but never provides any real indication that he has evidence to back it up. The "evidence" consists entirely of "Hey, this guy who photographs VOLCANOES thinks the Moon might make them erupt sometimes! He says he has some data too! He's really smart so you should believe him! Galileo! Einstein!"

The piece is peppered with pleading attempts to cast O'Meara as a luminary. Galileo is brought up as a comparison. There's also this bit of artistic license:

In 1985, Steve defied every written word about the limits of the human vision and became the first person on Earth first to visually recover Halley's comet on its 76-year return, using a 24-inch telescope and bottled oxygen at Mauna Kea, Hawaii.

That's a breathless way of saying he went up really high and used new technology to see a comet, but his breathless biographer claims he "defied every written word about the limits of the human vision" by simply using new technology in the way its designers intended. You could say the same thing of the first astronomer who ever used the Hubble telescope. This of course assumes the claim is even true.

It's not until after a few paragraphs of irrelevant biography that you get to the actual claims hinted at in the article's title:

On a five day observing trip to Arenal Volcano in La Fortuna, Costa Rica O'Meara's disciplined astronomy background led him to recognize a pattern in the volcanic eruptions that correlated with lunar tides and the Moon and Sun's gravitational pull. The 'Light Bulb' was lit!"

In the historic records a few people have noted lunar phases when viewing volcanic eruptions, but no one has ever investigated a serious link between the Moon and volcanoes and put it to a conclusive scientific test.

That's pretty much it. The article goes on to describe a few mechanics of tidal forces and further speculate on how the moon might impact volcanoes but never provides any evidence. Einstein is mentioned. A vague claim is made that the data exists, but no hint at what that evidence could be or when it is being published is ever offered.

It's clear the article writer doesn't really understand even the vague hints she makes as to what's being claimed. At one point the article points out that "In the historic records a few people have noted lunar phases when viewing volcanic eruptions". The problem with that is the actual PHASE of the moon isn't all that important to the theory. O'Meara's theory, such as it is, cares about the tides. The phase is merely the result of the Earth's shadow being cast upon the moon, not the gravitational pull the Moon is putting on that portion of the Earth at that given moment.

O'Meara's apparent incompetence as a researcher is highlighted, although unintentionally. Many volcanic eruptions are very well documented. If O'Meara is serious about proving his theory, why hasn't he gone over old eruption data and calculated the position of the moon in relation to those eruptions? The data to prove, or disprove, his theory is already recorded, all he has to do is process it. Why hasn't he? If he doesn't have enough confidence in his own theory to spend a few weekends doing rudimentary research to back it up, why should anyone believe him when he espouses it?

One of the final whimpers in the article comes in the form of a tired old chestnut popular among cranks, quacks and con artists.

new scientific ideas have been difficult, if not impossible, to prove to the prevailing scientific community.

People with no evidence often lament the pesky need scientists have for evidence. The bar can be high, especially when unseating an established idea, but it's this resistance to accept every new notion that floats to the top of a man's mind that keeps science grounded in fact and not fantasy. Anytime someone uses the boogieman of an entrenched scientific community as a way of defending their lack of evidence it's a red flag that can't be ignored. In the real world established theories are overturned on a regular basis. It's how science progresses and how scientists make a name for themselves. You don't get grants to re-prove something that's already established.

I have no issue with the vague details mentioned about the alleged theory. The notion that the Moon's gravitational pull could have some kind of vague influence on volcanic eruptions is, on the surface, plausible enough to warrant a closer look. My issue is with O'Meara pimping the theory using "science by press conference" with no data or research to back up his assertions. Supporting his claims with research would be more useful. Based on the claims made about his career in the article, O'Meara should know scientists need more than a smug smile and a few self-aggrandizing mentions of Einstein before they accept a theory.

No, it's not because people think he's gay

Unmarried Pastor, Seeking a Job, Sees Bias

Mr. Almlie, 37, has been shocked, he says, at what he calls unfair discrimination, based mainly on irrational fears: that a single pastor cannot counsel a mostly married flock, that he might sow turmoil by flirting with a church member, or that he might be gay. If the job search is hard for single men, it is doubly so for single women who train for the ministry, in part because many evangelical denominations explicitly require a man to lead

I don't think this guy's problems are because of fears that he might be gay. The fact that he's unmarried means any attempts he makes at tasks like marriage counseling will be purely theoretical. I've spoken to a few Catholics who insist that it's a GOOD thing Priests providing marriage counseling aren't "tainted" by experience, but damn it, if I want advice I want it from someone who has some relevant experience, not a theoretician who never put the theory into practice himself.

A big part of Christian theology is the human aspect of Christ. His coming to Earth and becoming one of us is part of the redemption. He KNOWS what it's like to face death and pain, to be temped as a man. Having walked in the shoes of the person you're speaking to is a major advantage in any kind of counseling, be it spiritual or secular.

As far as fears of him flirting with parishioners, that too is likely not a real issue. Single pastors are targets in a church. Plenty of marriage minded women set their sights on single minsters. This is to be expected. True, pushing 40 and being unmarried is going to trigger some "so what's WRONG with him that no one has married him?" speculation, but the lack of relevant experience is probably a bigger issue.

"Equal" Does Not Mean What You Think it Means

It's important to remember that Huck isn't talking about "Equal" by the definition of things like "All men are created equal" but in terms of making Fundamentalist interpretations of Biblical text equal in standing to secular law. It's not about equality between citizens, but about dissolving Separation of Church and State.

ThinkProgress » Blog Archive » Huckabee: Leaders With ‘Biblical Worldview’ Would Bring ‘Equality’ To The World

Exploiting the Japanese Nuclear Emergency

You add +10 to your saving throw against nuclear bombs!

There's tasteless, there's vile and then there's rank exploitation of fear and the vulnerable.

Bungling cops raid wrong home... for 41st time

The police should be wary of whoever rents this house next. There are plenty of militia groups in the US and UK who would LOVE an opportunity to set a trap for the police. All they'd have to do is rent it under a false or stolen identity.

On the flip side they might get lucky and the place will be rented by a hot nymphomaniac with a fetish for men in uniform, but I suspect psychotic militia freakjobs outnumber such women by a significant margin.

Idaho Republicans pass bill to enslave their descendants

The Idaho bill, which excludes issues like class size and workloads from negotiations for the state's 12,000 unionized teachers, was given final approval by the Republican-led House and is expected to be signed by Republican Governor Butch Otter.

I've read some hand-wringing about the current anti-Union movements being the end of the USA and the rise of a feudal plutocracy, but this is not the end of the USA by any stretch of the imagination. What's happening is conservative states are being reworked into pools for uneducated labor. The Idaho bill specifically removes issues like class size and teacher workload from union negotiations, pretty much guaranteeing teachers will be overworked, underpaid and be teaching more kids than is reasonable for providing a decent education. 20 years from now these states will find industries requiring educated workers will be leaving the state, while industries requiring uneducated workers will find cheap labor.

Part of the result is that American Citizens with no viable skills will be taking under the table jobs that currently go to illegal immigrants.

This isn't the death of America, just the death of education in Idaho and any other states that follow this absurd lead. Unless this movement spreads to the federal level, then what we'll see is an increase in the education and income gap between red states and blue states. Red states, lacking educated workers, will have higher poverty, drug use, unwed pregnancy and crime rates than blue states.

Here comes the genius. Prison workers often get a pittance for their labor. They're basically slave labor pools. Patriot missiles are assembled in part by US prison labor. As the crime rates in red states increase in proportion to the impending rise in poverty and unemployment, there will be a swelling in the prison population. The end result will be a massive slave labor pool right here in the USA. At that point the intellectual aspects of commerce and industry will have moved to the blue states, but the manufacturing and product assembly will be happening in the red states. We'll be able to take much of the manufacturing work currently being done in China and bring it back to the USA to be done by our own slave labor pool.

In short, this isn't the death of America, just the enslavement of the red states for the benefit of the blue states. I find it sadly ironic that many racist white Americans are voting for bills that will enslave their children and grandchildren, and they're doing so largely because the black man in the white House scares them.

Bacon in the News!

The article More to bacon than breakfast takes a few standard recipes and adds bacon. The Spinach and Bacon Quiche sounds a lot like a recipe my wife has prepared in the past. I can attest from personal experience that adding bacon to quiche is a tasty addition. I would further suggest that replacing the spinach with shredded broccoli works wonders.

While I use bacon drippings to make soap, ‘Simmer on you beans' talks about cooking corn bread on bacon drippings, a tasty way to add some flavor and spice to the corn bread. While this works best for savory applications as opposed to sweet ones, the use of bacon in things like chocolate suggests considerable flexibility of even bacon cooked corn bread.

Rising grain prices however may cause a spike in the cost of bacon, as the Irish are determined to encourage pig farming, even as New Zealand farmers are winning awards with free-range pigs.

Looking over an MMS study

I've been having some debates with folks about MMS on youtube. I was sent a link to the results for a "study" conducted on using MMS to treat cancer. I read the results, and sent the following reply to the person who had sent it to me:

http://www.alternative-cancer-care.com/MMS_Cancer_Study.html

"I know its not rigorous"

The sample size was only 24 people. This is tiny, too small to be considered anything other than a "pilot study." In real medical research sample sizes this small are never used for anything other than determining if a larger study is justified.

According to the section "Drawbacks of MMS Cancer Patient Study" there was no verification of ANYTHING the subjects reported. It was all self-reported.

There was no placebo and no control. Placebo and control groups are tough in cancer treatment, but generally the control consists of people taking a different medication or following an alternate treatment plan.

There was no consistency in the cancers being treated or the conventional treatment methods involved. If they wanted results worth publishing they should have stuck to people with similar cancers and similar treatment regiments. It looks like easily treated cancers were mixed in with difficult to impossible to treat cancers.

Despite claiming a measly 2 positive results out of a sample of 24, if you read the actual analysis of the "positive" results only 1 person actually recovered. The other "positive" result was that the person wasn't dead yet. We have no medical data on the "positive" respondent's claims about the nature of their cancer or the actual recovery. What's more, the one positive result stated "The original surgeon thought this was a 10-12 year tumor growth before diagnosis." That sounds more like a benign (non-cancerous tumor) than cancer. The study MADE A POINT of stating that the remission had not been confirmed, only that the patient "Believed" the tumor to be gone. With only one success, and a dicey one at that, we can't rule out spontaneous remission or the patient merely being in denial or mistaken about their cancer, if they even HAD cancer to begin with.

The claimed number of cures is identical to the claimed number of deaths. Given the mixed bag of cancers involved this is not surprising,

No effort is made to compare the results to the survival rates for people with similar cancers undergoing similar conventional treatments. This means the "results" are offered in a vacuum. There's no baseline for comparison. It's like saying "Michael is 1.4 Smoots tall" without providing any frame of reference for how big a "Smoot" is.

Even IF the results could be extrapolated for the entire population, saving 1 life out of 24 for a mixed bag of random cancers isn't exactly newsworthy. For comparison take a look at this chart of cancer survival rates by cancer type:

http://rex.nci.nih.gov/NCI_Pub_Interface/raterisk/rates28.html

The chart is not as detailed as I would like. Detection stage is averaged, so early detection cases with higher survival rates are averaged in with late stage cancers. The aggressiveness of treatment is also averaged. Earlier detection is considered one of the reasons breast cancer and prostate cancer survival rates are going up.

The only actual recovery listed in the MMS study was a breast cancer case. Breast cancer had an 80.4 survival rate from 1983 to 1990. This puts conventional medicine at a significant advantage over MMS. Many of the cancers on that list have survival rated in the 80% to 90% range, most are at least over 50%.

This means, if you use the results from the MMS study and compare it to the actual five year survival rates for cancer patients in the real world, it's one of the WORST cancer treatments out there!

I recommend checking out this Mayo Clinic article on what cancer survival rates MEAN for a person's prognosis:
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/cancer/CA00049

Benihana's food must REALLY suck

It's not often that the news of bad food in a Kuwaiti restaurant reaches the states, but when a restaurant manager sues over a bad review the news is going to get around. Mike Servo, manager of the Benihana restaurant in Kuwait, wants $18,000 in damages because Mark Makhoul didn't think much of their grilled chicken.

I've never eaten in the restaurant in question, but if the manager feels the need to sue someone for writing a lackluster review then it raises certain questions about the quality of the food. Specifically it leads me to conclude that the food must be pretty terrible if the manager needs to use a lawsuit to try and defend it.

Mark Makhoul's bad review is just one person's opinion. A manager suing over that opinion suggests to me that Mike Servo has NO confidence in the quality of the restaurant and prefers to shout down critics rather than address the underlying issues. If I'm ever in Kuwait, I'll be sure to avoid the Benihana chain.

Criticizing what he doesn't understand

Most sensible people will at least do a little research into a topic before they offer their opinion on it in writing. Mormon blogger William Monahan however is not burdened by the need for pesky things like facts and accurate information and instead chooses to dive in head first, armed only with vague notions and shoddy straw-man images of what he's attacking. The result reads more like a parody of conservative Mormonism than anything else. Let's take a look at Mr. Monahan's mental meanderings for a good laugh.

Please note, the use of text from his writing constitutes fair use under US law.

A world crazy for magic and divination will ultimately reject the majesty of the divine.

Tell that to devotees of Catholic Mystics.

While loveable vampires, werewolves and the Harry Potter craze may be titillating broomstick fiction, their supernatural romps are anything but super.


There is a reason for the exploding popularity of 1-800-PSYCHICS and the invasion of ghouls, magic and wizards. Predictably, the natural man substitutes the mystical for his Maker, growing fat on his own self-pleasing conceit. Thus conceited, he is free to cannibalize fantasy for faith.

The main problem with this bold assertion is that is presumes that people who are turning to Twilight and Harry Potter for entertainment are necessarily turning away from God in the process. Unless Monahan offers some actual evidence that this is the case, he might as well be attacking NASCAR or random prime time television programs for luring people away from God. The mere fact that a particular form of entertainment does not explicitly glorify God does not mean it is drawing you away from God.

Dungeons and Dragons


Some years ago I set apart a young man for full-time missionary service. Within two days of his arrival at the Missionary Training Center, he had to be sent home. He was suffering withdrawal symptoms from an addiction to "Dungeons and Dragons," a popular video game. Because he was engrossed in levels of magic, he was unable to level his focus on the magic of his mission.

I call bullshit on this claim. For starters calling Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) a video game makes it clear Monahan doesn't even know what D&D is. I'll give Monahan the benefit of the doubt and assume he's talking about a computer game that's either based upon D&D or is at least somewhat wizard and orc related, as opposed to something sci-fi related. Second, what kind of "withdrawal" is he talking about?

The "levels of magic" line is an early clue to just how poorly Monahan understands what he's attacking. It's the first indication that he doesn't understand the difference between fantasy and reality. He does not appear to realize that people who play Dungeons and Dragons aren't actually learning magic spells. They aren't actually summoning demons and the books about the game do not give directions on how to do either. This fundamental misunderstanding will be reinforced in the rest of his essay.

Sadly, some fans of the dark arts get sucked into the occult. They confuse mysticism with miracle, and spiritualism with spirituality. Perhaps their days would be better spent searching the scriptures than groping cobwebbed halls and creaky staircases.

Ahh, here we see the problem. Monahan is one of this ignorant idiots who, knowing nothing about role playing games other than what his pastor told him, is convinced that playing D&D means you learn actual magic spells. He's equating computer games with trying to learn magic. This is a bit like claiming all churches crucify a parishioner at Good Friday services, or that the NBA beheads the coach of the losing team, just like the Aztec game that inspired Basketball.

The next section of his ramblings, "The evolution of horror and the occult" is nothing more than a list of a few horror movies. Aside from a few template claims like "Taro readings were common and Ouija boards dotted the teenage party scene" there isn't much of interest there.

When the seedy creeps from the shadows


What was once reserved for drunken sailors and seedy dives is now mainstream

Wait, is he about to diverge from attacking D&D to claim public intoxication and syphilis riddled whores are now mainstream?

Sadly, no, but such a claim would make more sense than the rest of his essay.

Like all things seedy, vampires and wizards operate best from the shadows. They are repelled by the sunlight. Perhaps that is why millions of fans line up at the box office at midnight. Enough of vampires.

Does this guy think vampires are real? He seems to think D&D players are learning real magic. Does he think vampires are real too?

Where are the dentists? It's common sense: no pointy eyeteeth, no blood sucking forays into innocent necks.

That was random. I'm sure it made sense in his wee little head. Seriously, what point is he trying to make with that line?

And wizards? I'd rather fight evil with the character of Christ than a novelist's flawed characters.

Of course a novelist's characters are flawed. Perfect characters who never make mistakes are BORING to read about. Monahan seems to have real trouble separating entertainment from reality. D&D players are not ACTUALLY trying to fight demons. "Lord of the Rings" fans are not ACTUALLY trying to smuggle gold rings into volcanoes with the aid of wizards who have a tendency to die and come back with cooler clothing.

Pop culture is on the move


Pop culture is always on the move, but the motion sickness can make even the elect of God queasy. Just because something gyrates for attention doesn't mean we should pay attention.

Clearly, Monahan is not a Lady GaGa fan.

All kidding aside, this is more an issue of a youth oriented culture than anything demonic or occult. The youth oriented culture tends to annoy most people over the age of 35, but trying to cast that cultural flaw as an epic battle between good and evil is misleading. It's also idiotic and will do nothing to resolve the problem.

The net result of a world thirsting to mainstream the seedy is an unquenchable thirst for more, thus parching the seeds of faith.

Here we see that Monahan is apparently ignorant of Biblical text. After Jonah was vomited up by the sea creature that swallowed him, he went on to, against his will, minster to what was allegedly one of the most evil cities around. You know what they did? They repented. If Monahan was any kind of an evangelist he'd see a culture awash in pleasures of the flesh as a fertile ground. If worldly pleasures really are as spiritually empty as Monahan is likely to have been taught, then the current culture is one ripe for God's word. In a world of drowning people, Monahan is complaining that people need life preservers while sitting on a stack of them.

This guy appears to be more interested in complaining about there being un-Mormon entertainment in the world than doing anything to try and save souls. I have a quick tip for Monahan, spewing a bunch of nonsense that misrepresents the people you're trying to save is NOT going to win anyone over, it just makes you look like an ignorant, hypocritical ass.

The prophets warn


For centuries the prophets have warned us against magic, divination and the occult. "There shall not be found among you any that ... useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch ... or a wizard, or a necromancer. For all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord. ..." (Duet.18:10-12)

If Dungeons and Dragons players or horror movie fans were actually trying to cast spells or summon demons that verse might have been relevant. All Monahan has managed to do here is alienate anyone who actually HAS played Dungeons and Dragons. They know from personal experience that Monahan's essay is nonsense.

The sad byproduct of a world entranced by magic, vampires and ghosts is the more we assault the senses, the less sensitive we become to holy sensations.


Fans of the genre cannot escape God's warnings by claiming vicarious thrills in fiction.

They can however dismiss Monahan, as he does not appear to understand the difference between reading a fiction book about witches and deciding to gut a cat and try to read it's entrails to see who will win the next Superbowl. Watching "The Witches of Eastwick" is not the start of a slippery slope that will lead to you getting knocked up by a demon. Most people can tell the difference between entertainment and reality. Those who cannot have mental disorders that need to be treated.

Warning to parents


Parents who wink at mystical fantasy as "innocent fun" may be closing a blind eye to the not so innocent. There is something irresistible to our youth about escaping reality, and when they do, fantasy can become their unintended jailer.

Citation needed. I want to see the psychology research that shows playing Dungeons and Dragons leads to people rejecting the religion with which they were raised. I want some actual data and not the ramblings of a man who can't be bothered to differentiate between watching a horror movie and summoning a demon.

By guiding our children’s interests to an abiding interest in the divine, they avoid the shadows where bad things happen.

Ahh, the "Bury their head in the sand" guide to parenting. Instead of raising kids who can deal with the real world, they raise kids who are often shattered when they venture beyond the safe borders of the social playpen their parents construct.

I'm sorry, but I want my son to be able to deal with the real world, not hide from it.

Mysticism is not miracle, and howling for the undead is not a prayer for life eternal.

Again, we see that Monahan can't tell the difference between entertainment and active participation in the occult. His inability to differentiate between fantasy and reality is troubling.

While we can't protect our youth from every devious thing the world offers, we can offer the armor of God in the safety of a gospel-centered home.

Here we are near the end of Monahan's drivel an he has yet to actually give people a reason to see D&D as a threat, other than his inability to separate fantasy from reality.

The power of prayer, the sacrifice of service, the iron will of the iron rod: These are things that produce faith leading to Jesus.


These things are not magic, but their transforming effect is truly magical

I know plenty of Christian and Jewish people who play Dungeons and Dragons. It has not hurt their faith that I can see. Of course, unlike Monahan, they're capable of separating reality from fantasy.

William Monahan is a 1980 graduate of BYU Law School. He practices law in Gilbert, Ariz. A former Phoenix stake president, he serves on the high council for the Queen Creek Chandler Heights Stake.

That's right, this drivel was brought to us by a graduate of the The Brigham Young University Law School. It looks like Monahan has lived in a Mormon cocoon for his entire life. You'd think a lawyer would want to actually learn something about what he's attacking before he attacks it. I hope whatever Monahan does with his law degree involves more competent research than his babbling about religion.

Quinoa Spaghetti with Chicken and Yam Sauce

It was 9:00 at night. I had just finished removing the labels from some empty wine bottles so I could reuse them to bottle my home made prickly pear mead. I was standing by the stove. A back burner was rendering the fat from two pounds of bacon so I could use it to make soap this weekend. A front burner was simmering ketchup on the stove. I was lamenting the fact I'd accidentally turned the ketchup into BBQ sauce by adding too much molasses. I was trying to work out a way to de-BBQ the sauce when it occurred to me I haven't been blogging much about my kitchen adventures.

I think I'll start with what I made for dinner tonight. Sadly I have no pictures handy, having neglected to take some at dinner. Perhaps I'll take one if I have the leftovers for lunch tomorrow.

Dinner consisted of quinoa spaghetti with chicken and yam sauce.

Serves 3 to 4.

Total cook time: 20 to 30 minutes.

Ingredients:
1 package quinoa or other spaghetti
1 chicken breast
1 green bell pepper
1 medium onion
1.5 cups frozen yam, yellow squash, butternut squash or cauliflower puree
2 tsp chicken seasoning of your choice
1/4 tsp salt if the seasoning contains none

1. Slice the chicken breast into slightly smaller than bight sized pieces. Sprinkle the pieces with salt and the seasoning. Set aside.
2. Heat the water for cooking the spaghetti. The goal is to have the spaghetti finish around the time the sauce is ready.
3. Dice the onion.
4. Core the bell pepper and slice it into bite sized pieces.
5. Put the diced onion in a 12 inch skillet with 2 tsp olive or vegetable oil. Cook on medium-high heat until it starts to turn golden.
6. Add the chicken. Cook until the largest chicken pieces show no pink when sliced.
7. Add the bell pepper. Cook until it begins to soften, about 3 to 4 minutes.
8. Add the spaghetti to the pot and the frozen puree to the skillet. The spaghetti should take about 8 to 10 minutes to cook, which should be just enough time for the frozen puree to melt and heat.
9. Stir the sauce periodically.
10. When the pasta is cooked, drain and mix with the sauce. Serve hot, with a few grates of pepper and some grated hard cheese.

Enjoy!

Mother Forces Her 5-Year-Old Daughter to Wax Her Eyebrows

For the woman in this video, the child is not her flesh and blood, a human being she's raising in the hopes of producing a healthy, well-adjusted adult but merely a tool for vicariously re-living her own glory days. The child is a means for aggrandizing the mother, raw meat to feed her ego. The child is reacting badly to having her eyebrows waxed is not a cause for compassion or maternal concern, but annoyance at a tool not responding in a convenient matter.

Some idiot has decided to castrate Huck Finn

Disclaimer: I am a big Mark Twain fan.

Some idiot has decided to castrate Huck Finn.

This is not the first time someone has tried to censor Huck Finn and it won't be the last.

Mark Twain wrote the book AFTER slavery had ended. One of the things it did was capture a time and place for future generations so we could SEE how ugly and vile racism could be. Censoring it whitewashes the past, making the evils and oppression committed against slaves seem less vile than they really were.

Huck Finn is one of the most banned books in history. It was banned in many Southern states when it first came out, not because it dropped the N-Bomb about as often as people actually used it, but because it offended white sensibilities by portraying Jim as a better human being and father than Huck's own Pappy. At one point Huck has an internal debate about the morality of helping a slave escape. He was taught by the preacher that what he was doing constituted stealing and he'd go to Hell for it. In the end Huck puts his loyalty to Jim ahead of his own soul and decides that if he has to go to Hell for helping Jim, then he'll go to Hell.

Back in the 1990's "The Oxford Mark Twain" was published, a multi-volume collection of the Twain books that were published in his lifetime. They contained introductions and afterwords by famous authors and scholars. I highly recommend going to your local library and checking out Toni Morrison's introduction to Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

The butcher "modernizing" (Castrating) Huck Finn is described in some sources as a "Mark Twain scholar." I can't see how a serious student of Mark Twain's work could seriously consider gutting Huck Finn to be a good thing. This isn't a case of removing some of the anti-Indian racism in "Roughing It" because it's embarrassing, this is vivisecting a vital component of Huck Finn for the sake of an abstract ivory tower fantasy of political correctness.

I foresee two groups being fans of this neutered Hick Finn.

1. Hand-writing, OCD academics and activists who are more concerned with word counting than the actual content of the piece.

2. Racists and white supremacists who are happy to see the racism of the past toned down so it doesn't seem as bad to modern readers.

English Muffins

In December of 2010 I started making my own English muffins. My initial efforts were based on the recipe English muffins and crumpets: an (almost) shared recipe. I've since made some modifications and am getting increasingly better results. Here is the modified recipe I used for my last and thus far best, batch. Each step only takes a few minutes. The wait time between steps in absurdly flexible making this a surprisingly convenient recipe despite the multiple stages.

Mix:
Warm water, 1 1/2 cups
Yeast, 2 tsp

Sugar, 1 tsp
Let yeast "proof" for a few minutes. Once you see bubbles mix in:
Bread flour, 2 cups.


Cover and set aside for 2 to 24 hours or longer. The longer you let it rest the more of a sourdough flavor you'll get. You can use an active sourdough starter instead of the mix above, but you may need to increase the flour by a few tablespoons in the next step.

Add:
Flour, 1 cup
Salt, 2 tsp (The original recipe called 2.5 tsp salt, but my wife and I found that too salty.)
1/4 to 1/2 Cup grated cheese. (Optional, I prefer extra sharp cheddar)

Knead well and set aside for 30 minutes or more. You may need to add a tablespoon or two of water to get the new flour and salt to incorporate. I've found a three to five minute knead works better than mixing with a spoon. You can use a dough hook and a mixer.

Roll out the dough and cut into rounds. A water cup or clean tuna can works nicely. You can let the rounds rise for 10 to 20 minutes, but this is optional.

Heat a pan, griddle or cast iron skillet to medium-low heat. Add a bit of oil or butter if not using non-stick or cast iron cookware. Cover and cook the muffins for 8-10 minutes per side until lightly browned. You can reduce the cook time by increasing the heat, but anything above medium to medium-high heat risks blackening the muffins. The rule of thumb from the original recipe was to cook the muffins a bit cooler than you would cook pancakes with the same cookware.

Let the muffins cool on a wire rack. If you eat them while still hot, the cheese will still be a bit gooey inside, almost as if the muffins had already been buttered. Refrigerate or freeze any muffins you don't plan to eat within the next 4 to 5 days. They freeze very well.