Okay okay, so perhaps it should have been obvious.



Still, I've always taken it as read that when Ricky Gervais is acting like a mean obnoxious bully it is actually all an act. After all, he often plays characters that get mocked a fair bit themselves, so they idea that he would have a bullying mentality in real life seemed to me to be somewhat unlikely.

Whether Gervais is doing tv or movies or stand-up it always seemed likely that we weren't seeing the personal opinions of Ricky Gervais. "He MUST be presenting a fabricated persona," I always thought.

However, that illusion was shattered when I listened to the Kermode and Mayo podcast for last week. Simon Mayo interviewed Ricky Gervais in relation to his role in the recent Muppets sequel. Naturally Gervais is just as likely to be putting on a persona during an interview as anywhere else, but the nature of the interview, promoting a childrens' Muppets movie, put Gervais' comments completely at odds with any kind of carefully planned role-playing.

Simon Mayo puts forward his claim to high levels of Muppets fandom when he notes that he bought the Muppets album on vinyl when it was released back in the 70s. Ricky Gervais' response is actually to mock Mayo for this level of fandom. And if that was where it stopped that might have been okay, but Gervais' laughter at his own joke runs into hysterics and takes on a very mean and spiteful air.



Now if this is just a persona and not Gervais' real life opinion, then why is it put forward in an interview intended to promote the Muppets movie? Surely mocking the old Muppets album would be a pretty poor way to market the new Muppets movie, quite possibly alienating fans.

And things actually (somehow) get even worse. Once he's spent a while laughing at the idea of anyone being excited by the Muppets album, Gervais then makes an analogy with a teacher in his school. The teacher apparently admitted to crying during a movie and had to leave the school due to the embarrassment caused by mockery from pupils.

There's something very immature about Gervais' attitude. It's the old schoolyard bully mentality of mocking other people to make yourself look good. And the analogy with the teacher in school seems like a pretty clear admission that Ricky Gervais WAS that kind of schoolyard bully and he seems to remain one to this day.

Simon Mayo's original interview with Ricky Gervais is still available here:


(video link)

After the interview, undeterred by Gervais' immature mockery, Mayo played this rather cool song from the Muppets album (making use of a Gilbert and Sullivan song).


(video link)

About everything you could ever want from Ricky Gervais' brand of comedy is found in a very short section of the Matthew Vaughn movie "Stardust". Just 2 short minutes and you've no real need to see anything he does ever again - and I really hope I never do.

Thanks to my router being randomly busted I don't expect to have functioning internet until Tuesday.

Posted via m.livejournal.com.

Okay, so I'm not like an expert in US law. Or even moderately informed on US law. So yeah, take this as a fairly uninformed view...

Quite often you get instances where there's a conflict between two people for whatever reason and that conflict turns violent. There are plenty of instances of two people getting into a punch up with one another with no witnesses. Quite often that sort of thing doesn't go to court because it's one person's word against the other's and it doesn't normally involve what the courts would view as serious injury.



Now if there's a weapon involved like a knife or a cricket bat or whatever it may be, there's more likely to be a court case involved. Two reasons for this. Firstly because if a weapon was used the injuries are likely to be greater and if one person died from stab wounds or having their skull caved in naturally the courts are going to need to investigate. However, there is another reason involving the presence of the offensive weapon in the first place. Now naturally if you've just come from a cricket game then you've got a good reason to be carrying a cricket bat and you can explain your journey from the fields or park where you were playing. If you are carrying a gun you may have been doing some hunting and you can explain your route from the hunting grounds. You might have a good reason for carrying the item in question, but explaining the presence of that item will be part of your defence since that item may well have escalated the conflict.



Now in America there are gun concealment laws which mean that people need no excuse whatsoever for why they were carrying a gun. Perhaps if they were carrying a kitchen knife, a meat cleaver or a chainsaw, but a gun? No explanation required for a gun. Clearly the gun is required for self-defence.



Now in the Trayvon Martin murder case, Zimmerman claims that Martin attacked him. There are no witnesses, so the courts cannot confirm nor deny this. Since the evidence is so light here, let's just give be ridiculously charitable to Zimmerman and presume for the moment that Martin DID attack him. Naturally we have no reason to suppose this. It's highly probable that Zimmerman simply gunned Martin down in cold blood. But for the sake of argument we'll just presume that Martin attacked Zimmerman here and see where it takes us...

We know from a phone call to police from Zimmerman that Zimmerman had been watching Martin and considered him suspicious, so Zimmerman's presence near Martin was clearly not a coincidence and so, even if we presume for the sake of argument that Martin DID attack Zimmerman, the likelihood that Martin's attack was unprovoked is pretty slim.



I would like to suggest, and I don't think this is controversial, that if Zimmerman had not brought a gun to that conflict no one would have died. The presence of the gun escalated the conflict. Sure Zimmerman might have left with harsh injuries. That's possible. Whether they'd be worse than those received by Martin is questionable. And Zimmerman could sue later and either get compensation, or cause Martin to be given jail time, or both. There would definitely be consequences, but nobody would be dead. The presence of the gun escalated the outcomes of that confrontation. It did more harm than good.



Particularly unhelpful here is the "stand your ground" law which seems to suggest, as I see it, that if someone is violent towards you, you have free reign to go Mortal Kombat on their ass. The most important detail here is apparently nothing to do with what weapons the assailant is carrying and everything to do with whether the person 'standing their group' perceives themselves to be under threat. So if you feel like you are under threat (FIGHT!) you are free to fight the person threatening you to the death (FINISH HIM!) and if you've got a gun and they don't you are clearly going to win (FATALITY!) - unless they have awesome ninja skills and can disarm you or unless (and this is perhaps more likely) you find that in a close-quarters fight you are unable to hit them with any bullets.... Hmmm.


(All the all-caps stuff in brackets above comes from the game Mortal Kombat btw)

Okay, so this is another concern of mine. Zimmerman was supposed to have hit Martin with a bullet to the heart. Are supporters of Zimmerman arguing that this was a lucky shot? Since I would have thought that in a hand-to-hand struggle, getting your gun out and landing a successful shot to your opponent would be pretty tough.



So the Trayvon Martin murder case doesn't appear to give a decent motivation for Martin's supposed attack, it doesn't successfully demonstrate that Martin was doing anything other than defending himself, and no suspicions are raised by Zimmerman's decision to come to the conflict armed with a gun. According to US law this is all perfectly fine. All Zimmerman's defence need to demonstrate is that there is insufficient evidence to convict him of murder. With the victim dead, the evidence on the other side of the argument is limited. The presence of the gun is viewed as entirely unproblematic since everyone can carry a gun wherever the hell they like and if they feel threatened they have the right to kill. And no matter how poorly or implausibly the defence put forward their case, the lack of evidence that Trayvon's death was murder rather than self-defence is enough to get an "innocent" verdict. (Scotland has an alternative verdict of "not proven" which might be appropriate here.)

Considering that the gun rights activists in the US think it's inappropriate to mention gun control when innocent people are gunned down by people who clearly should never have been licensed to hold a gun, I'm sure they think it's even more inappropriate to bring it up in a case where the innocence or guilt of both parties is even less certain. I know I'm just a liberal Brit with no understanding of US gun culture, but the more I hear about it the more I feel like I don't want to understand. What is the benefit of concealed weapons and how does it outweigh the negatives? If people weren't allowed to carry guns with them and gun down anyone they perceive as a threat Trayvon Martin would still be alive today, regardless of all this "who attacked who?" kerfuffle. Escalating a hand-to-hand conflict by introducing a deadly weapon is not a good thing. Isn't this obvious?

With the recent change in Pope and the long-running child abuse scandal the new Pope must now handle, Roman Catholicism is clearly in the spotlight. The recent news that Pope Francis has a history of close cooperation with the military Junta in Argentina is clearly not a good sign.

As head of the Jesuit order from 1973 to 1979, Jorge Bergoglio – as the new pope was known until yesterday – was a member of the hierarachy during the period when the wider Catholic church backed the military government and called for their followers to be patriotic.

Bergoglio twice refused to testify in court about his role as head of the Jesuit order. When he eventually appeared in front of a judge in 2010, he was accused by lawyers of being evasive.

The main charge against Bergoglio involves the kidnapping of two Jesuit priests, Orland Yorio and Francisco Jalics, who were taken by Navy officers in May 1976 and held under inhumane conditions for the missionary work they conducted in the country's slums, a politically risky activity at the time.

His chief accuser is journalist Horacio Verbitsky, the author of a book on the church called "El Silencio" ("The Silence"), which claims that Bergoglio withdrew his order's protection from the two priests, effectively giving the military a green light for their abduction.

(Via The Guardian)

There's also a comment from an Argentinian on Pharyngula's blog summing up the situation as follows:

As an Argentinian I can confirm your “rumours” and add that this guy was a collaborator with the military during the last coup d’etat during the 70′s : Among many things, he informed to the military that two monks that were working in a low income neighbourhood were no longer protected by the catholic church, facilitating their detention and posterior disappearance.

Mind you, to “disappear” at that time meant to be detained by the military, held without rights or trial, possibly (and often) tortured under suspicions of being a Marxist/ “terrorist”, being completely incomunicated [sic] with your family and finally be killed and buried on an unmarked grave, or thrown from a plane into the river.

Thrown.

From a fucking plane.

Into the river. (Known as “deathflights”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_flights )

(via Butterflies and Wheels)


Jorge Mario Bergoglio (now Pope Francis) with General Jorge Rafael Videla leader of the oppressive Argentinian military junta, who seized power in a military coup d'etat in the late seventies and early eighties.

However, while the religion I wish to talk about today certainly committed recent atrocities in full knowledge of the central authority, I do not mean to discuss Roman Catholicism below. Sure, I'm going to talk about forced child labour and there IS at least one Roman Catholic example of this. The film "Oranges and Sunshine" dramatises the real life event where children where taken from their parents without permission and sent to Australia for 'a better life' which, for those sent into the care of the "Christian Brothers" meant forced labour and abuse.

However, while there are plenty of cases of religions where individual groups have been involved in horrific practices, some of which they are unwilling to apologise for and which may continue to this day, there's one religion for which is seems to comprise a central raison d'etre. I am of course talking about the religion of Scientology and their organisation known as the Sea Organisation.



It's recently been revealed that the Sea Organisation deliberately denies children a proper education, forces them to engage in hours and hours of forced labour, and keeps the children separate from their parents for much of their lives. When followers of Scientology sign up for the SeaOrg they sign a billion year contract. That's possibly one of the most creepy things I have ever heard.

This isn't a matter of a religious organisation being stuck in old fashioned thinking or taking advantage of the current political situation or even a horrible act from centuries past for which they still hold the guilt. This is an organisation set-up within a particular religious body by its central authority figures and run centrally with the sole purpose of exploiting, abusing and neglecting its followers, including many young children.

Now I'm not about to give other religions a free pass here. I've already stated that Roman Catholicism, amongst others, has a lot to answer for. But I really do wonder whether this new revelation about Scientology doesn't make "The Church of Scientology" the most abhorrent religious organisation of its size functioning today. And I seriously thought the bar was already pretty high....



For the whole transcript for Jenna Miscavige Hill's interview with the BBC plus a video of another interview look under the cut below...

( Read more... )

Also, check out the recent podcasts from "The Good Atheist" about the Church of Scientology:
(Part one)
(Part two)

Another shooting in America. This time a lone gunman decided to attack a Gurdwara in Wisconsin....



ginmar has some interesting thoughts on this...

UPDATE: Apparently this is fake. This news actually comes as something of a relief, since while I decided to share it because it was so random, part of me was feeling a bit bad about posting information on someone's private tragedy. Posting someone's private internet prank feels rather more acceptable...

Fairly old news. Someone had a tattoo of their boyfriend's face put on her arm. The entire exchange between her and friends about it (including the boyfriend quickly breaking up with her) ended up getting leaked across the internet. It's kinda entertaining, but mostly tragic. Not a great advert for Facebook as a supportive place for social networking either....

I discovered this through Dave Schneider's blog, but he appears to have taken it down. (Presumably because he recognises that it's in kinda poor taste to spread this around. Oh well!)

If you haven't seen this already, most of the internet has. So in order not to feel left out, click on the image below for the full story:

(Click to enlarge)

The title of this post is one of the quotes from her "friends" on Facebook (not me). Not sure how much this really has to offer psychologists, though perhaps if they are following that up with a career in one-to-one therapy....

Okay, so I just heard of her for the first time ever the other night when she appeared on the BBC Radio Comedy show "Museum of Curiosity". I've got lots to say about what I've come across, but for now I'll simply leave you with this transcript of her bits on the show.

Remember that it's a comedy show, so she's being intentionally flippant and her fellow contributors to the "museum" aren't taking it all entirely seriously either:

Host: Dr. Francesca Stavrakopoulou is the senior lecturer of theology at the university of Exeter, a member of the European Association of Biblical Studies and the presenter and writer of the BBC series "The Bible's Buried Secret". She also happens to be an atheist.

What's more, her time on TV has been spent arguing that Moses never existed, and that the Bible was re-written to malign Eve and erase God's wife from memory.

So Francesca, God's wife who was she then?

Francesca Stavrakopoulou: Well, she's a goddess called Asherah who was responsible for various life-giving functions in the earthly realm along with her consort, her husband, Yahweh. She's kind of fairly well known throughout the ancient Near East and she's pretty cool.

Co-contributor: What was she called again?

Francesca Stavrakopoulou: Asherah.

Co-contributor: So God was married?

Francesca Stavrakopoulou: Hmmm.

Co-contributor: Wow. I imagine that was a big spread in Hello wasn't it?

Francesca Stavrakopoulou: But he divorced her and she didn't do quite so well in the divorce settlement. The God that's worshipped today by Jews, Christians and Muslims isn't the same as the God that the Bible was written about - and that God actually was the God who was married.
    
Host: That's really remarkable, I mean this has been kept a pretty tight secret then?

Francesca Stavrakopoulou: Really it's like a testimony to how bad scholars are at just communicating stuff that we talk about, because we've been talking about it for a long time. But a lot of people disagree with me. Anne Widdecombe disagrees with me.

Co-contributor: I think calling her "a lot of people" is a bit cruel.

( The rest is under the cut... )
Cross-posted to atheism

Shelagh Fogarty – BBC Radio Five - Wednesday 10th August

Shelagh Fogarty: Our reporter spoke to these looters in Manchester.

( Interview with Rioters in Manchester )

Shelagh Fogerty: Well *sighs* let’s talk to Winston Smith. The author of a book called “Generation F” which deals with the issues of the so-called “underclass”. He’s also a former youth worker and writes a critical blog about the youth justice system.

Hello to you, Winston Smith.

Winston Smith: Hi there.

Leslie Pullman is a community campaigner and has worked with victims of anti-social behaviour in the Manchester area.

Hello Leslie.

Leslie Pullman: Hiya

That’s depressing listening isn’t it Winston Smith?

Winston Smith: It’s very depressing, but I’m not surprised at all and it reflects basically the work that I did in Manchester with the Youth Offending Service. I’m not at all surprised that that’s the type of attitude. Cause they’re saying that the government have failed to stop it, but they’ve been failing for years.

Theresa May was talking about the consequences. “People are going to see the consequences for these crimes.” Well, I can tell you that for those that are under 18, some of them will be in youth detention centres. They will be in rooms. They are not allowed to call them “cells”. They will have video games and televisions in those rooms. Look, I’m not advocating that they should be in dungeons or being treated inhumanely, but they should be punished.

For those that don’t end up in detention centres, they will be put on what’s called an intensive surveillance and supervision programme, which is part of the Youth Rehabilitation Order. While they are on that they will spend the majority of their time being driven by youth workers like me to play football, to go to gyms. They will be told that they themselves are victims of crime. It’s absolutely absurd.

Shelagh Fogerty: Leslie Pullman

Leslie Pullman: I couldn’t agree with more with what the gentleman’s just said. I was asked this question nine years ago when I was promoting ASBOs. I was asked repeatedly “why would they do this?” and it’s exactly what the gentleman said, because they can. And that the kids know they can do it, but you must understand when you’re looking at the pictures on the television, they’re not kids, a lot of them, they’re adults. And the adults are leading the kids, due to kids being let off being called criminals and being given these soft options. And they do it because they can, it’s exactly right. And they’re right, the government hasn’t stopped them. Not just this government, successive governments.

And it’s nothing to do with being disaffected, being black. It’s got nothing to do with all that. It’s opportunism.

( Read more... )

For a limited time you can listen to the original interview at BBC Radio 5's website. Choose the programme for the 10th August (2011).

I had never believed things were this bad....

(video link)

- Everyone was just gonna riot. It was just going mad. Like chucking things, chucking bottles.
- Breaking into stuff. Breaking into shops.
- It was good though.
- It was madness. Mad.
- Yeah, it was good though.

Is it good though?
- Yeah.
- Course it is!

So you're drinking a bottle of Rose wine?
- At half nine in the morning!
- Yeah free alcohol!

Have you been drinking all night?
- Yeah.
- Like, it's the government's fault... I dunno.
- Conservatives!
- Yeah whatever, whoever it is. I dunno.
- It's about showing the police that we can do what we want, yeah.
- Yeah, that's what it's all about, showing the police we can do what we want. And now we have.

Do you reckon it will go on tonight?
- Yeah hopefully.
- Definitely.
- Hopefully.

But these are like local people. Why are you targeting local people? Your own people?
-It's the rich people.

Really?
- It's the rich people. The rich people have got businesses and that's why all of this has happened. Coz of rich people. So we are showing the rich people that we can do what we want.

I can understand mixing up two actors every now and again, but it's now got to the point where there are three actors I'm mixing up. I'm genuinely not sure that I can tell between them.



They're identical!

Okay, so when you put three images of them next to each other the differences are a little more obvious, though I still say the first two look pretty much exactly the same. When you are trying to identify them across different movies though, they just look exactly the same.

Click on the images for their imdb pages.