24 thoughts on “An Easter tw**t from Ricky Gervais”

  5. From the quote file:

    Easter = National Zombie Scapegoat Awareness Day.

    John 3:16
    “For God so loved the world that He sacrificed Himself, to Himself, to appease Himself, and is now just beside Himself with the idea of torturing, for all eternity, those who don’t believe this story.”

  6. Was reading Wikipedia article on cute white Van cats
    Their most notable genetic characteristic is their almond-shaped eyes that often are mismatched colours. The most valued and valuable members of the type generally have one amber-green eye and one blue eye.

    Van cats are known for swimming in Lake Van in the Armenian plateau. (This may be the source of the popular but possibly false or exaggerated belief that the formal Turkish Van breed is innately more fond of water than the average cat. [Perhaps they heard the tale of Jesus walking on water and keep trying to see if it is truly possible to do so, but never twig that the answer is no])

    Interesting that there is evidence that the level of Lake Van varies greatly. 9500 years ago the level dropped 300m and 6500 years it rose again by 300m. Is this too early to be a source of flood myth ? Also it is near the source of the Euphrates river. Lake Van was at the centre of the Urartu kingdom. Also near Mt Ararat (5137 metres).

    Erik Futtrup Youtube channel has a good video “Mt Ararat- mountain top views” which shows there are no other significant mountain peaks visible, in contradiction of Genesis 8v5, but then the Hebrew text only had the word “rrt” so nobody really knows the location. The Coran has Mt Judi (2089 metres). I smell a rat, hopefully the cats will kill it.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_cat#/media/File:Turkish_Van_Cat.jpg

    1. Floods are ubiquitous in time and space. You don’t need to look to any particular flood to figure out how somebody could imagine a flood so huge that it covered the entire world.

      You also don’t need to look to a particular volcanic eruption to identify the origins of fire and brimstone as the ultimate destination of the people who get buried underground, any particular shark as the origin of sea monster stories, any particular thunderstorm as the origin of thunderbolt-throwing sky gods, and so on.

      b&

  9. oh damn, sorry for the embed, I thought I’d done it right, grrrrrrr

    I recommend the plugin called ‘flashblock’ (for Firefox, at least, there are probably equivalent ones for other browsers) that prevent Flash content from loading unless you click on it.

  11. I spent seven years in children’s protective services, and I wouldn’t give a nickel for a government that takes care of you. I can understand a safety net and healthcare, but personal services pretty much suck.
    I’m always astonished that people who see the problems with monopoly in capitalism don’t see the problem with monopoly in government.

    1. The idea behind CPS isn’t that removing children from their homes is a good thing, but rather that it’s a lesser evil in those particular circumstances than letting them stay.

      I’m sure that breaks down in practice, and it may well break down more than we should be willing to accept.

      But we as a society have to do something for the children growing up amidst piles of used needles and condoms who have to scrounge for crumbs of Doritos off the floor if they want to eat.

      b&

      1. My job wasn’t to remove kids from their homes. It was to provide (or arrange for) the services that would enable the kids to live in their homes.

        Families with no relatives or friends or community are pretty much up the creek. They certainly don’t get much help from the government.

        You can come up with all kinds of systems that look good on paper, and if the people running the systems also generate the statistics, everything looks great.

        My own opinion is you need redundant and competitive systems, even mutually antagonistic systems, to keep everyone honest.

        1. Competition can be good, but not always. You don’t, for example, want two different fire departments competing with each other for the contract to provide services to your home; we learned that lesson the hard way.

          And religion is most emphatically a problem, with secularism a cure for that particular problem (though, of course, not necessarily for other problems). Just read Jerry’s new book when it comes if you have any doubts.

          b&

      2. You don’t have to look far to see what can happen when those running things have a monopoly of power. The Cathoplic Church was pretty much the government in many countries, and it failed to police itself.

        ?England is pretty much secular, and its police failed to police the government.

        The problem is not religion vs secularism. It’s monopoly.

  12. I’ve seen that pic before, even tw**ted it before myself at least two years ago. I didn’t know Ricky Gervais made it, so didn’t credit him.

  13. “Your prayer is very important to us. Please remain on your knees and you will be answered by the next available deity. Your waiting time will be approx [INAUDIBLE]”

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