Here’s the Roadrunner cartoon that we’ve been waiting for: the one in which Wile E. Coyote defeats the bird. Be sure to watch all the way to the end:
The Roadrunner bites the dust
June 20, 2015 • 4:24 pm
The Christopher Hitchens Lecture: Tom Holland on de-fanging Muhammad
June 20, 2015 • 1:00 pm
Here is British author Tom Holland giving the Hitchens Lecture (“Title: De-Radicalizing Muhammad”) at this year’s Hay Festival, a celebration of books and literature. (I was there five years ago, and got to meet Tom Stoppard as well as glimpse Stephen Fry, whose large figure loomed across the room like the Jungfrau.
Holland’s point is similar to that described by Ayaan Hirsi Ali in her latest book (Heretic): that there is no “true” strain of Islam, that murderous extremists draw their ideology from the Qur’an and the life of the Prophet, and the only way to tame Islam is to “deradicalize Muhammad”. (One of Hirsi Ali’s main prescriptions is to get Muslims to stop taking the Qur’an literally, something that seems highly unlikely to work given the ubiquitous tendency of Muslims to be literalists.) Holland, for instance, claims that the story—drawn from the hadith—of Muhammad’s marriage to Aisha when she was six, and his having deflowered her when she was nine, is metaphorical: an allegory showing the “potency of Aisha’s image.”
Holland claims that modern jihadis are actually reforming Islam in the wrong direction—that the religion had not been so literalistic in earlier years, and organizations like ISIS now claim to be pruning away the benign but false conceptions of Muhammad that accreted in past generations. (I have no idea whether Holland’s claim of an earlier and less malevolent era of Qur’anic interpretation is accurate.) His solution is to recapture the more mystical views of Muhammad that obtained earlier, and to accept the conclusions of modern scholars that “we know less about the historical Muhammad then we know about the historical Jesus.” (If that’s the case, and I do know the lack of any convincing evidence for a historical Jesus, then we have NO IDEA whether Muhammad even existed as a historical person!) Finally Holland thinks that Muslim views of Muhammad will eventually revert to the more benign view.
Nice idea, but I don’t share Holland’s optimism, especially given the Pew Research poll showing that, by and large, Muslims throughout the world take a hard-line view of the religion, favoring things like the impositions of sharia law and the killing of adulterers and apostates. That has little to do with Muhammad’s character itself.
The Q&A session begins at about 37 minutes. Notice how the moderator, in her questions, tries to de-emphasize the role of theology in Islamic terrorism.
And, for background information, here’s a nice discussion between Hitchens and Stephen Fry on Blasphemy in 2006.
h/t: Dom
Hieronymous Bosch’s 500-year-old butt song from Hell
June 20, 2015 • 10:30 am
This is a testimony to the tenacity of human endeavor born of curiosity.
Below is Hieronymous Bosch’s great, great painting, “The Garden of Earthly Delights,” which I had the pleasure of seeing (with no other gawkers around) when I visited the Prado about a year and a half ago. It was painted between 1490 and 1510. While the work clearly deals with themes of divine paradise and damnation, the interpretation of its many bizarre symbols has defied experts for centuries. But it remains a favorite of stoners and connoisseurs of the bizarre.
If you look at the right-hand panel that depicts Hell, you’ll see what looks like a lute about a third of the way up on the left side. Enlarged, it looks like this:
As the Global Post reports, you can clearly see a song on the guy’s rump, and it can actually be played:
This original contribution to human knowledge comes from Amelia, a music and information systems double major at Oklahoma Christian University. She also likes to blog about nerd things, for which we’re eternally grateful.
Late one night, Amelia and her friend Luke were examining The Garden of Earthly Delights, the surreal triptych by Hieronymus Bosch, when they discovered something amazing:
“…music written upon the posterior of one of the many tortured denizens of the rightmost panel of the painting which is intended to represent Hell.”
After she stopped laughing, Amelia decided to transcribe the notes and record the song based on what she knew of Gregorian-era chants. Here’s the result:
But wait—there’s more. The writer of the website The Well Manicured Man, named Will, has turned the Butt Song into a full choral work. Click on the screenshot below to go to the page and hear it:
Here are the lyrics:
butt song from hell
this is the butt song from hell
we sing from our asses while burning in purgatory
the butt song from hell
the butt song from hell
butts
Those sound like lyrics that Bosch could have written.
Music lovers and aficionados: what do you think of the composition?
h/t: Hempenstein, Stash Krod
Caturday felids : science-defying cat, cat riding tortoise, and cat helping autistic boy
June 20, 2015 • 9:00 am
I’m hoping that my co-moderators will continue on with Caturday Felids after this week, as I pride myself on never having missed a Caturday, even during my travels. Today
Richard Dawkins, who I guess by now knows of my ailurophilia, sent me this tw**t. Call a scientist! (Click to see the video.)
https://twitter.com/BabyAnimalPics/status/601845054932647936/photo/1
*******
Here’s a kitten riding a tortoise (does anybody know the species?). Note: you may want to turn the sound down to avoid the annoying music.
*******
Finally, from Love Meow, we have the touching story of Fraser Booth, an autistic boy, who was dramatically helped by his friendship with a gray cat, Billy. I’m not sure how this works, and perhaps the story is anecdotal and not indicative of a possible therapy, but it is certainly striking. Can cats often be therapeutic for children with autism? From the article:
Billy a rescue stray has made a complete difference to an autistic child, Fraser Booth, and brought him out of his shell.
Before Billy, Fraser was born screaming and became overwhelmed by everyday activities. Every day life can be a challenge for Fraser. (Daily Mail)
When Fraser was a two-year-old, he met Billy at the cat protection shelter. Billy purred and laid his paws across Fraser, and they have been inseparable ever since. Slowly but surely Billy has transformed Fraser’s life.
When Fraser met Billy, a video:
Some photos:
“He always appears when Fraser is getting upset and offers his head close to Fraser’s to reassure him and recently, when Fraser was poorly, Billy sat on his lap all day.
They say animals can sense things, but Billy seems to know before anybody else if Fraser is going to get upset.”
“The first time we took Fraser to see Billy, the cat went straight to him… Fraser sat down on the floor and Billy laid across him with his paws on his legs and just started purring. Fraser said ‘This is our cat, he can come live with us,’ and that was that.”
Billy has taken away the stress away from Fraser and added a lot of happiness and calmness into Fraser’s life.
h/t: Laurie
Readers’ wildlife photographs
June 20, 2015 • 7:30 am
Yesterday we had three photos from reader Jon Meddings. I prepared this post with the rest of his photos, but he hadn’t yet sent the names and background information. Since he’s temporarily absconded to Europe, I’ll simply present the pictures and leave the unidentified species and subspecies to the readers.
Alaskan brown bears (Ursus arctos alascensis):
Alaskan brown bear and cub:
Cheetahs (Acinonyx jubatus; obviously taken in Africa):
Coyote (Canis latrans):
Grizzly bear (Ursus arctos horribilis; same species as brown bears shown above, but different subspecies). Look at those claws!
Another grizzly bear:
Impalas (Aepyceros melampus):
Lion (Panthera leo):
Wildebeest (Connochaetes sp., there are two species and I don’t know which this is):
Zebras and reflections (Equus sp.; again, there are several species and I don’t know which these are):
Finally, one of our infrequent astronomy photos, this from reader Tim Anderson in Oz:
This picture shows a close conjunction of the Moon, Venus and Jupiter shortly after sunset at Tumut, New South Wales, 20 June.
Saturday: Hili dialogue
June 20, 2015 • 4:32 am
It’s Caturday, and exactly one week till the Big Road Trip. I have a visitor for much of the week, so posting will be light. I hope readers will be faithful, and will tolerate somewhat of a hiatus until mid-August. Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is craving fresh mouse:
A: What are you listening so intently to?
Hili: I have a feeling that this little mouse is dithering like Hamlet.
In Polish:
Ja: Czemu się tak przysłuchujesz?
Hili: Mam wrażenie, że ta myszka hamletyzuje.
Raccoon invades beer warehouse with predictable result
June 19, 2015 • 3:30 pm
It’s Friday afternoon, and that means GOOFY ANIMAL VIDEOS. From United Press International, we have a drunken procyonid:
NEW YORK, June 18 (UPI) — A New York man shared video online of a raccoon [Procyon lotor] trying its best to walk in a straight line without falling over after getting into some alcoholic beverages.
The video, posted to YouTube by Phillipp Scott, shows the animal stumbling around a warehouse near some broken alcoholic beverage containers while a man’s voice notes, “This raccoon is drunk!”
The raccoon stumbles over to some broken beer bottles and appears to lick some of the spilled beverage up from the floor.The tipsy thief eventually seems to notice he’s being watched and stumbles away from the human voices. It nearly escapes the range of the camera’s vision before falling onto its side.
Scott said on Twitter the video was filmed at Union Beer Distributors in Brooklyn.
If you think it’s rabid, I’ll suggest you’re wrong: this animal is three sheets to the wind.
Other drunken raccoons:
And, since it’s Friday, here are ten good raccoon videos in one clip. What is it doing with the dog’s mouth in bit #2? Watch it wet its paws before eating in clip #3. And be sure to watch them abscond with pizza. As for the hydrophilia of this species, I think it remains unexplained.
Blaming the South Carolina murders on the “war against Christianity”
June 19, 2015 • 2:15 pm
Where do the right-wing news channels dig up people (some of them black) who claim that the killing of 9 black people in a South Carolima church was due not to racism, but to animus against Christianity? After all, the white killer, Dylann Storm Roof, had a history of racism, explicitly said that he wanted to kill black people, and proclaimed that he was getting revenge for black men raping “our women”. We have, of course, encountered left-wing resistance to accepting people’s stated motives for violence, but now the Right is doing the same thing.
Fox News is apparently good at digging up people to pin the murder on hatred of Christianity. Here’s a clip from last night’s The Nightly Show‘s Larry Wilmore that not only mocks that view, à la Jon Stewart, but also segues into a thoughtful discussion of the motives behind the murder. Click on the screenshot to see it.
