I know of a Greek labyrinth that is but one straight line.

Ha! Something has remained the same.

parazel@gmail.com — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 14:47:15 GMT

My school's library has put Darwin's Black Box on display in the science section.

This annoys me greatly.

Wheee...

parazel@gmail.com — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 22:18:42 GMT

HAY, FLIST.
So, I got a bunch of books from a thrift store yesterday. Eighteen in total, actually. Most of these were textbooks (on biology, chemistry, psychology, sociology, economics, history, and politics), but I also got four plays by Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Hamlet, and Julius Caesar) and The Republic by Plato. They are all currently residing on my bookshelves, which I fear will break under the sheer weight of all the textbooks. I keep telling myself that I really should start reading them, since it'll be such a monumental task, but instead, I'm typing an inane post on LJ that nobody cares about. That would be usual...

It's funny how I used to loathe thrift stores. I hated them -- for their faint aura of dirtiness and disorganization, their boringness and their aisles full of broken baby toys and grandma-style dresses. Maybe they're just better now, or maybe I've developed more of a curiosity for small, old things that have been given up and shoved to the back of a stained shelf. Maybe both.

My parents finally took me to the library. I actually found The End of Faith by Sam Harris there (astonishing). I am, admittedly, only fifty-three pages into it, but I'm not sure whether I like it very much. It seems overly simplistic, and I find myself doubting a lot of what's in it. The back cover tells me that Harris is a graduate in philosophy, but, I don't know, it doesn't seem to be what I would expect from a philosophy graduate. But then, I'm definitely not a philosophy graduate, so who am I to judge?
...Besides, maybe the rest of the book is different. *shrugs*

There's an ad on the side of this page telling me that God loves me and has a plan for my life. I find this strangely amusing.

parazel@gmail.com — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 23:39:48 GMT

He just has no limits.

We live in an era when public high schools and colleges have all but banned God from science classes. In these classrooms, students are taught that the whole universe, including plants and animals—and humans—arose by natural processes. Naturalism (in essence, atheism) has become the religion of the day and has become the foundation of the education system (and Western culture as a whole). The more such a philosophy permeates the culture, the more we would expect to see a sense of purposelessness and hopelessness that pervades people’s thinking. In fact, the more a culture allows the killing of the unborn, the more we will see people treating life in general as “cheap.”

[...]

Jesus was reminding people that every person will one day die, and that they need to be ready! Those who were killed by this tower in Luke 13 didn’t know that when they arose that morning, it would be their day to die. The Lord Jesus, in saying “unless you repent,” was reminding everyone that they needed to be sure they were ready to face eternity.

This is disgusting on so many levels.

Thirty-three people dead. Thirty-three individuals, with their whole lives ahead of them, murdered. However, Ken Ham apparently thinks this is the perfect subject to use in the pursuit of supporting his ill-informed ideology. Where's his basic sense of human compassion? Did he just not think about the pain that others must be going through right now?

He's going too far when he implies that science education is somehow a catalyst for this shooting. Sure, he qualifies the paragraph by stating that he isn't saying that belief in evolution was what drove the attack -- but he definitely implies it. He slaps atheism, materialism, science, evolution, and abortion together, and suggests that schools need more religion in them. How can he so callously use this tragedy to promote his politics?

Then he ends the article with a talk about how everyone will die, and how they really should convert to Christianity. It's a classic conversion tactic -- get people while they're mourning and afraid. He supplies whoever will listen with the perfect targets to blame for society's troubles -- atheism and science. It's emotional blackmail.

I just can't believe it. I just can't. Is there anything that he won't abuse, put a misleading spin on, or outright lie about in order to further his agenda?

I just came back from a week in NYC

parazel@gmail.com — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 17:22:19 GMT

Yay! *tackles and hugs flist*

So, I went to Manhattan for about a week, over spring break. Now I want to move to New York. Assuming I don't move to Canada, I mean.

I walked all the way through Central Park, visited Chinatown, went to the Museum of Natural History (twice) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, saw the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, got a stuffed animal from FAO Schwartz (I couldn't help it... it was just so adorable), and... uhh... a bunch of other things. You get the idea.

The Museum of Natural History was, well, badass. Especially the fossils and the minerals and gems. And the Scales of the Universe part was sexy. Really. At one point in the exhibit, the Hayden Sphere (87 feet tall) was compared to an entire atom. The proton, compared to that, would be smaller than the period at the end of this sentence. I knew atoms were mostly empty space, but I didn't realize that that much of them was empty space. And meanwhile, a bunch of adults were walking through the exhibit, looking bored and exasperated. How can someone not be fascinated with stuff like that? It's almost equally amazing.

The Hall of Human Origins was cool, too. If they tried to put something like that in Georgia, it'd be burned down on the first day.

Chinatown was pretty interesting. When we first started out, the shops were all terrible -- they had exactly the same stuff, mostly huge fake-looking necklaces and Dolce and Gabbana rip-off purses. By the time we got to the fifteenth shop, it was getting annoying. But once we got deeper into Chinatown, the shops became more interesting and authentic-looking. They had herbs and little bags of strange candy, hordes of carved Chinese dragons and Buddhas, colorful purses and scarves, and even little turtles swimming around in tanks.

I saw two huge toy stores while I was there, as well. The first one was FAO Schwartz, which I adored. It was like a three-story-high wonderland. They had life-sized stuffed animals and a little cafe in the middle of the store. The next store was bigger, but I didn't like it very much. I can't remember its name, in fact... oh well. It was like turbo WalMart. It seemed to be mostly HotWheels cars and trucks, just stuff you'd find in the toy aisle in any big store. The lights were glaring and everything was over-the-top. But on the highest floor, it had a life-sized T-rex that roared at visitors, so that redeemed it. :P

So, anyways, I'm still trying to recover from the trip, even though school starts again tomorrow...

So, how have you been, dear denizens of LJ?

Random memory from today

parazel@gmail.com — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 22:50:39 GMT

As I was walking in a park near my house, I saw a car with a most deliciously heretical adornment of bumper stickers. They included:

--The Darwin fish
--"I'm pro-choice and I vote"
--"Come the rapture, we'll have the whole Earth to ourselves"
--"You can't kill for peace" (and several others along those lines).

I must know who the owner of this vehicle is. Opinions such as this are virtually unheard-of in my area of Georgia. Perhaps I'm not the only infidel around here. Or, at least, the only non-Christian around here. (I suppose atheists are too much to hope for...)

What is this "substance" that you speak of?

parazel@gmail.com — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 22:45:25 GMT

Haiku² for jeweleddragon
fizzyland is a deeply troubled young man testimonies about
@

Created by Grahame

Yes. Yes, he is. And that's why he's so cool.

Haiku² for jeweleddragon
grain of sand and a heaven in a valentines love contains the same
@

Created by Grahame

Haiku² for jeweleddragon
flying fish if you were to have me call you by the bed with your firm
@

Created by Grahame

...O_o... o_O... @_@

Haiku² for jeweleddragon
at your place or mine the police hi police yeah i like to report
@

Created by Grahame

Consequence of previous haiku.
(When I first tried to write "previous", I accidentally typed in "pervious". Whee!)

I think this one is my favorite:

Haiku² for jeweleddragon
innocent pay in blood for your own disease your words and pictures scream
@

Created by Grahame

ecks dee

parazel@gmail.com — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 20:26:13 GMT

Hay flist, I have returned! :D

Hopefully, I'll have some interesting things to say over the next few days. That's rather unlikely. But still.

Also, it's my birthday. But I don't feel any different.

I was forced to post this, I tell you, forced!

parazel@gmail.com — Sat, 10 Feb 2007 18:17:09 GMT

Leave a comment with an awesome cat macro and I ~~shall~~ might if I feel like it:

1) Tell you why I friended you.
2) Associate you with a song/movie. <--- Might not do that one (am horribly unaware of a lot of good movies and songs)
3) Tell a random fact about you.
4) Tell my first memory of you.
5) Associate you with an animal/fruit.
6) Ask something I've always wanted to know about you.
7) In return, you must spread this disease in your LJ. Or else. Except not really.

parazel@gmail.com — Sat, 06 Jan 2007 00:01:39 GMT

As I'm sure is pretty obvious, I haven't had much to say for a while. In fact, lately I just haven't been feeling like writing anything at all. Whenever I get a comment, I just let it sit in my inbox for ages before I finally make myself reply. It's not that I don't like you guys, it's just that I simply can't make myself write. I guess I'm just feeling too worn-down to really contribute anything. And I keep feeling that since I don't really know that much, perhaps I shouldn't be ranting on at all.

So...

This is my official LJ hiatus.
(Notice the extra-important big text!1!1)

I'll still read, though I probably won't comment.

I expect I'll be back in early March.

parazel@gmail.com — Tue, 26 Dec 2006 04:54:27 GMT

MERRY CHRISTMAHANUKKWANZAA, FLIST!

*flumps*

(Yes, I know that it's about ten minutes 'til December 25 is over.)

What's taters, precious? ...What's taters, eh?

parazel@gmail.com — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 21:04:34 GMT

PO-TA-TOES!

Stuck.

In.

My head.

::claws face:: Arrghh...

But does bring back fond memories of the potato jig. ::pokes life_question::

Safe Sex and You

parazel@gmail.com — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 19:23:11 GMT

No words can describe.

Remember to cover your hammers before you put them in smelly shoes, guys!

IMA STOCKING HOR

parazel@gmail.com — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 23:59:42 GMT

I'm bored. Therefore, I demand you all fill out this little meme so that I can pretend that somewhere in the Big World, I am lurved. O.o

Xmas Stocking

leave a gift for Parazel

get your stocking

parazel@gmail.com — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 03:13:13 GMT

It is far, far too cold for Georgia.

18 degrees Fahrenheit. 18 DEGREES.

Running for water

parazel@gmail.com — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 22:12:08 GMT

Brutality

parazel@gmail.com — Sat, 18 Nov 2006 16:38:49 GMT

Watch This, and Turn Up the Volume:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3CdNgoC0cE

An article on the incident:
http://dailybruin.com/news/articles.asp?id=38958

UCPD officers shot a student several times with a Taser inside the Powell Library CLICC computer lab late Tuesday night before taking him into custody.

No university police officers were available to comment further about the incident as of 3 a.m. Wednesday, and no Community Service Officers who were on duty at the time could be reached.

At around 11:30 p.m., CSOs asked a male student using a computer in the back of the room to leave when he was unable to produce a BruinCard during a random check. The student did not exit the building immediately.

The CSOs left, returning minutes later, and police officers arrived to escort the student out. By this time the student had begun to walk toward the door with his backpack when an officer approached him and grabbed his arm, at which point the student told the officer to let him go. A second officer then approached the student as well.

The student began to yell "get off me," repeating himself several times.

It was at this point that the officers shot the student with a Taser for the first time, causing him to fall to the floor and cry out in pain. The student also told the officers he had a medical condition.

UCPD officers confirmed that the man involved in the incident was a student, but did not give a name or any additional information about his identity.

Video shot from a student's camera phone captured the student yelling, "Here's your Patriot Act, here's your fucking abuse of power," while he struggled with the officers.

As the student was screaming, UCPD officers repeatedly told him to stand up and said "stop fighting us." The student did not stand up as the officers requested and they shot him with the Taser at least once more.

"It was the most disgusting and vile act I had ever seen in my life," said David Remesnitsky, a 2006 UCLA alumnus who witnessed the incident.

As the student and the officers were struggling, bystanders repeatedly asked the police officers to stop, and at one point officers told the gathered crowd to stand back and threatened to use a Taser on anyone who got too close.

Laila Gordy, a fourth-year economics student who was present in the library during the incident, said police officers threatened to shoot her with a Taser when she asked an officer for his name and his badge number. (emphasis mine)

Gordy was visibly upset by the incident and said other students were also disturbed.

"It's a shock that something like this can happen at UCLA," she said. "It was unnecessary what they did."

Immediately after the incident, several students began to contact local news outlets, informing them of the incident, and Remesnitsky wrote an e-mail to Interim Chancellor Norman Abrams.

...And two more:
http://dailybruin.com/news/articles.asp?id=38960
http://cbs2.com/local/local_story_319101652.html

The former is from the same source, but the article is more in depth. It says that the student was shot at least four times with the Taser, even when he was already handcuffed. A study published in the Lancet Medical Journal in 2001 showed that a Taser shot lasting three to five seconds can result in immobilization for five to fifteen minutes. What does this mean? The student may not have been physically able to get up, even though the officers were demanding that he do so.

But just listen to the video. Words can't describe the feeling I got as I listened to those screams...
I was so furious that my eyes filled up with tears. I thought I was actually going to cry. How could someone do this? Why didn't anyone stop them?! Why did they just form a circle around the scene?

Insidious

parazel@gmail.com — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 23:19:20 GMT

The sex-ed speaker left today. The normal health teacher came back to assess what we learned, and to provide extra information. He reminded the class that contraception does, in fact, exist, but he didn't tell us how to get it. He also warned us to watch out for personal opinions masquerading as fact.

It was also the time when my suspicions were proved.

People usually don't leave presentation having absorbed specific facts and statistics. Instead, they come away with a general feeling. That's part of what makes abstinence-only education so insidious.

When asked about the effectiveness of condoms in preventing pregnancy, one guy replied that they "don't work." (The abstinence-only teacher had spent quite a bit of time discussing the shortcomings of condoms, while avoiding giving any real representation of their effectiveness.) The teacher did correct him.

Then the teacher started a discussion on abortion. When he asked who thought abortion was okay, I was the only person in the entire class to raise my hand. (Yes, it was awkward, but at least nobody glared at me.) A few people raised their hands for "abortion is never okay", and the rest of the class thought that it was only okay in some circumstances, such as rape and ectopic pregnancies.

The teacher went on to play Devil's Advocate with some people. One girl said that she thought that a "baby shouldn't be aborted if it has feelings... I think at 18 days is when it gets them." I asked her where she was pulling "18 days" from, but I already knew. She said that because the abstinence-only speaker talked about how a baby's heart begins beating at 18 days. I knew people were going to equate that with emotions...

So cunning. By only challenging contraception, abstinence-only education manages to give people the impression that it never, ever works. And that speaker was very vocal about her opinions on abortion, too. I suspect that she really influenced the class, who probably hadn't spent much time thinking about it before. From declaring that a fetus is a person, to asking people how they would feel if their little brothers and sisters weren't born, to saying that "a baby doesn't deserve the punishment for a rape", I think that she far outstepped the boundaries of public school education. I thought it was supposed to be neutral...

Hey, kids, the HOMOSEXUAL MAFIA's out to murder you and repeatedly sodomize your corpse!

parazel@gmail.com — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 19:26:29 GMT

http://mediamatters.org/items/200611140008

MICHAEL SAVAGE: And I want to tell you something, and I'm going to say it to you loud and clear. The radical homosexual agenda will not stop until religion is outlawed in this country. Make no mistake about it. They're all not nice decorators. You better get it through your head before it's too late. They threaten your very survival. They went after the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church is now caving into the homosexual mafia. They will not stop until they force their agenda down your throats. Gay marriage is just the tip of the iceberg. They want full and total subjugation of this society to their agenda. Now, if you want that and if you don't think it's a threat -- believe me, that is what's going to occur in this country.

Funny, I never seemed to realize that gays and lesbians wanted to destroy all religion, force everyone into gay marriage, and murder us. I also never realized that they were a branch of the Mafia. And all this time, I thought that they just wanted to have the same rights and recognitions as married heterosexual people! You learn new things every day, isn't that right, flist?

Newsflash: "Gay" and "lesbian" are NOT synonyms for:
--Murderer --Baby-rapist --God-hater --Child molester --Bigot --Religion-hater
--Uncontrollable monster --AIDS carrier --Dog-fucker --Puppy-kicker
Etc., etc., etc.
However shocking that may be.

There is. NO. "Radical homosexual agenda". This is the ridiculous and hateful invention of a small group of bigots with far too much political influence for their own good. I challenge any moron who believes that there's a "radical homosexual agenda" (not that there's any of them reading this) to provide actual proof of said agenda. I haven't heard of a mass movement wherein gays and lesbians are clamoring for rights to murder children and ban religion. However, I do hear all the time of a rather large movement for denying recognition to gays and lesbians. It also seems to be that gays are the ones getting murdered in hate crimes, not the other way 'round.

People like this enjoy screeching, "I'm being persecuted! Make the evil gays go away!" The reason that they're so insistent upon this is because they want to mask their own agenda. They want to force their religious rules on everyone else. Apparently, since they "can't" (or shouldn't be able to) limit people's civil abilities based on sexual orientation, they're the ones who are being limited and persecuted.

/rant

Of posts and shrimp

parazel@gmail.com — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 23:33:02 GMT

omgz, I haven't updated in forever. : \

Sorry for the long absence, LJland. I'm running out of things to say, and finding more things to read. Posting feels pointless.

But to make up for that, here's a shrimp on a treadmill. Sadistically amusing.

parazel@gmail.com — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 21:46:22 GMT

Scientists teleport two different objects.

I wish that I could understand this. I feel so pitifully incompetent not having any idea what they're really talking about.

Gay Rights

parazel@gmail.com — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 21:52:33 GMT

"Why is it that, as a culture, we are more comfortable seeing two men holding guns than holding hands?"
- Ernest Gaines

We would like to know who really believes in gay rights on LiveJournal. There is no bribe of a miracle or anything like that. If you truly believe in gay rights, then repost this and title the post as "Gay Rights". If you don't believe in gay rights, then just ignore this. Thanks.

(From flist)

Save me, Mister Darwin!

parazel@gmail.com — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 00:59:38 GMT

I finally went over to the much-loathed AnswersInGenesis website to see just what the crap is in it.
http://www.answersingenesis.org/

O_o

...Wow. There is no good word to describe the sheer ridiculousness of it. It's like reading about how the Earth is flat, atoms are a pack of lies, and gravity leads to immoral actions. Except instead of ranting on about those topics, they're trying to launch some sort of war against evolution.

Seriously, WTF?

Apparently, evolution and secular humanism are religions. And, apparently, evolution is a moral code. Evolution is also, somehow, the reason why people are mean in school. Humans are also not in the kingdom Animalia, for some strange reason. And evolution is pseudoscience, while the the world being created in six days, dinosaurs on the ark, Adam and Eve, and some great Invisible Bearded Sky Daddy all have truckloads of evidence in their favor.

And how they keep on bashing homosexuality! What is with those literal-Bible people and their strange obsession with gays and lesbians? Why don't they start throwing a fuss about how people are wearing polyester and eating shrimp?
Is it just me, or are they only grasping for reasons to justify their own homophobia?

What's really depressing is that so many people where I live adhere to this crap as Ultimate Divine Truth. Bullshit, says I. No matter how many times you chant "The Earth is 6,000 years old!!!!!!", it's not going to magically come true. And no matter whether you plug up your ears, stomp your feet, and scream bloody murder, it won't be true that people who acknowledge evolution are necessarily out to sodomize you with a red-hot poker and devour your children. Kind of like how people who acknowledge atoms and gravity aren't out to steal your soul for the Devil.

These people are so wrapped up in trying to disprove the blatantly obvious that they never realize just how idiotic their lies are. Their little creation myth just isn't literally true, and even if most of science was somehow wrong, that doesn't mean that the Christian God created everything in six days.

parazel@gmail.com — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 23:58:42 GMT

View Poll: #822070

parazel@gmail.com — Sun, 27 Aug 2006 16:29:53 GMT

Misspellings can be quite amusing.

starchaser57 in christianitysex:

"This is also why this self esteem nonsense is such a soul damning teaching. There have always been people who will not allow God to humble them to this degree. Their slavation is not a new birth but an abortion for they will not cooperate with the Holy Ghost."

Another funny Christianity-related misspelling that I've seen before is 'crucifiction'.

Does anyone have any others?

parazel@gmail.com — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 00:37:22 GMT

So, uhm, WTF is a babyfur anyways?