Subscriptions have risen quickly over the last few days, and we reached this figure last night:
I’m chuffed, but, sadly, am unable to identify person number 30,000.
A milestone
November 20, 2014 • 4:22 am
Thursday: Hili dialogue
November 20, 2014 • 4:04 am
It is a cold Thursday in Chicago, but at least we’re not Buffalo, where five feet of snow blanket the ground. More good news: Professor Ceiling cat may not need a root canal; we will wait and see over the next week how the nerve fares after drilling. Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, little Hania (one of Fitness’s staff) asks Hili an important question.
Hania: How did cats get rid of dinosaurs?Hili: We ate them.
In Polish:
Hania: Jak koty pozbyły się dinozaurów?
Hili: Zjedliśmy je.
__________
Hili did eat a bird yesterday . . .
RIP Jimmy Ruffin
November 19, 2014 • 5:52 pm
Another Motown great left us. This time it was Jimmy Ruffin (born 1936), older brother of David Ruffin, lead singer of The Temptations. Although Jimmy never attained the fame of his brother, he had one indubitably immortal soul song, and that was this one, released in 1966:
“What becomes of the broken hearted” was written by William Weatherspoon, Paul Riser, and James Dean, which explains why this was Ruffin’s only top ten hit. He had the pipes, but not the ability to write songs (Riser was the genius there). Nevertheless, this song will always be a golden oldie, and I’ve danced to it many times.
The spoken introduction in the version above was ditched from the final recording, which you can hear here.
And, just for fun, here’s the best cover of that song ever, sung by Joan Osborne on “Standing in the Shadows of Motown” video, in which the original Motown sidemen, self-named “The Funk Brothers”, played some of the label’s greatest hits. (Video highly recommended by Professor Ceiling Cat.) Osborne’s version is a bull-goose rocker, and features many of the people who played on Ruffin’s original hit. They didn’t lose a beat over the years.
Notice how a Motown song is instantly recognizable from the first bars, and every song had a different and special lick to start it off. (Listen to “Ooo, Baby Baby” and the beginning three drumbeats, for instance.) That was due largely to the improvisatory skill of The Funk Brothers.
In his spare time, a Russian miner takes stunning pictures of foxes
November 19, 2014 • 2:46 pm
Bored Panda, which I’m starting to realize is the most aptly named site on the Internet, tells the story of Ivan Kislov, who works as a miner in the remote Russian town of Magadan but spends his spare time photographing local wildlife, and has a special passion for foxes:
When he has time during his long shifts, he looks to photography for “relaxation from routine.” He likes to go on “hikes to inaccessible places, raftings,” or just simple walking tours to “observe the wildlife.”
Though he takes pictures of everything from bears and reindeer to wolves and stoats, Kislov says the foxes are often very willing models: “Foxes are curious and can come very close, and I shoot with wide angle and telephoto lenses.”
There are more pictures at Bored Panda, and a gazillion great ones on Kislov’s site, and another site called “500 px“. He also has a Facebook page (we’re now “friends”).
Here’s a selection of fox pix from Bored Panda:
A fox and a rabbi walk into a bar. . . .
And here’s Kislov himself:
h/t: Diana MacPherson
Kerri Miller’s journalistic double standard
November 19, 2014 • 12:55 pm
Kerri Miller is either a dreadful journalist or an uneven one, and here’s the evidence: her interviews with Karen Armstrong and Richard Dawkins. The former is saccharine and uncritical, the latter hypercritical and unfair.
Yesterday I mentioned Kerri Miller’s interview of Karen Armstrong on Minnesota Public Radio (MPR). I didn’t hear the whole thing, but did watch three 10-minute video clips and commented on one. Now you can hear the whole interview, which is 58 minutes long, at this site.
Go there and press the button that looks like this:
If you are even a bit critical of religion, you’ll find the interview infuriating. Armstrong, with Miller’s approbation, excuses religion and fields Miller’s softball questions. Miller didn’t ask a single hard or provocative question, but merely eggs on, worshipfully, Armstrong’s long-winded lucubrations. (Warning: don’t listen to this unless you have a strong constitution!). Armstrong apparently doesn’t know how to answer a question without nattering on for ten minutes. Arrogant, self-centered, and afflicted with a chronic case of logorrhea, Armstrong even reads her entire Charter for Compassion, and lets us know that she won the TED Prize for it. And, of course, she exculpates religion for every evil supposedly done in its name, blaming oppression (that goes for ISIS, too).
Now, if you have time, listen to her 2009 interview of Richard Dawkins here (there are six YouTube pieces that will play in order).
It’s the usual aggressive interview leveled at Richard by those who believe in belief. She accuses him of conceiving of religion as “infantile” and “unsophisticated” (the usual strawman), calling Dawkins a “fundamentalist” similar to religious fundamentalists. She even asks him whether, as an ageing male, he might possibly find God on his deathbed. Miller also doesn’t seem to evince much understanding about how science works, and asks him why on Earth he would bother writing his book on the evidence for evolution (The Greatest Show on Earth). It’s clear that she is hostile, and I’m gratified that Dawkins remains fairly calm when under attack.
Now I don’t mind interviewers being hard on their subjects, but it’s simply bad journalism to be hard on an atheist while kissing the rump of a closet religionist like Karen Armstrong. Welcome to America, and National Public Radio.
Miller:
The stuff below is from an interview of Kerri Miller by Minneapolis/St. Paul Magazine. The warning signs are already there:
~
The best license plate ever
November 19, 2014 • 12:32 pm
And don’t forget to feed them!
h/t: Several readers
BBC shows winners of photography contest for osculating faith
November 19, 2014 • 11:15 am
UPDATE AND CORRECTION: The contest wasn’t held by the BBC, but by a pro-religion organization called Faith Through A Lens. I erroneously assumed the BBC held the contest as I missed the link at the very bottom of the post. Rather than hosting the competition, the BBC simply presented the results as heartening news. I’ve changed the title of this post and a bit of the wording to reflect that. Apologies for the error. Nevertheless, I object to the continuing claim that “faith” (i.e., belief in the absence of convincing evidence) is a virtue, and doubt that the BBC would show pictures like the two at the bottom if there was a “Religion is Dangerous” contest.
__________
Oy gewalt—we have yet another instance of British media banging on about how wonderful religion is. The BBC presented results of a contest called “Faith Through a Lens,” which has been running for five years. Here’s its purpose, given in the latest selection of winning photos:
[T]he competition aims to show the positive role faith plays in everyday life through the medium of photography.
I’m not inspired to show a selection of pictures, though I’ve put the winner below. Granted, religious faith has motivated some good acts, but it’s also motivated many bad ones. (On balance, my view is that religion has been harmful for the world, and is useless in the modern world). However, as reader Oliver noted when sending me this link:
In the interests of balance, I hope they also run a competition to show the negative role it plays…
And indeed, where’s the journalistic balance? This “contest” has an avowedly political purpose, which the BBC bought into.
So here’s the winner of the “We love religion” contest:
And here’s my entry for the counter-contest. Believe me, I could have shown much worse:
Oliver contributed his own entry, showing malicious and hateful behavior of Christians against Muslims in the Central African Republic:
You can add your own photo LINKS below, but please, don’t show anything grisly, as it makes some people ill.