blacksundae

“The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this.”

Well, I suppose that puts one of his most famous quotes in its proper context. Link! [via Digg]

“Spaced,” the apparently brilliant comedy show from the creators of Sean of the Dead, is finally crossing the pond. Can’t wait.

The children and teachers of Louisiana are being used as pawns by the Louisiana Family Forum and, most likely, the Discovery Institute, about which I have written so extensively. These people will assuredly not be around to clean up the wreckage they will leave in their wake if we don’t stop them. We have to stop them.

Link!

National Geographic:

Fried human, barbecued human, broiled human, raw human…were these items on the menu of the day for our prehistoric ancestors? Quite possibly, according to genetic researchers.

Scientists from England, Australia, and Papua New Guinea say that cannibalism is the most likely explanation for their discovery that genes protecting against brain diseases that can be contracted by eating contaminated flesh have long been spread throughout the world.

A growing body of evidence, such as piles of human bones with clear signs of human butchery, suggests cannibalism was widespread among ancient cultures. The discovery of this genetic resistance, which shows signs of having spread as a result of natural selection, supports the physical evidence for cannibalism, say the scientists.

“We don’t in fact know that all populations did select. The selection may have occurred during the evolution of modern humans before they spread around the world,” said Simon Mead, a co-author of the study from the Medical Research Center with University College, London.

*belch*

Link! [via Reddit]

Reuters:

John Cusack is outraged over the Iraq war, so the U.S. actor channeled his anger into a low-budget political satire — complete with a chorus line of scantily clad female amputees — that he hopes will offend.

Inspired by anger about the war and questions about the political power held by global corporations, “War, Inc” is set in Turaqistan, a fictional nation occupied by a private U.S. company called Tamerlane and run by a former American vice president.

Link!

Man… to think I used to enjoy “Win Ben Stein’s Money.” Now Mr. Stein says things like this:

When we just saw that man, I think it was Mr. [PZ] Myers, talking about how great scientists were, I was thinking to myself the last time any of my relatives saw scientists telling them what to do they were telling them to go to the showers to get gassed.

And this:

Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place, and science leads you to killing people.

The upshot of this cartoonishly anti-intellectual bullshit is that it makes it even harder for Intelligent Design proponents to pretend that their snake oil is genuine science, seeing as how the Discovery Institute has hitched itself to Stein’s Expelled bandwagon. Link!

The Raw Story:

Rep. Broun has introduced H.R. 5821, also known as the Military Honor and Decency Act, which would close what he calls a loophole that allows the continued distribution of pornography to soldiers, to their moral detriment, with the help of taxpayer funds.

“As a Marine, I am deeply concerned for the welfare of our troops and their mission,” Broun said on April 17. “Allowing the sale of pornography on military bases has harmed military men and women by: escalating the number of violent, sexual crimes; feeding a base addiction; eroding the family as the primary building block of society; and denigrating the moral standing of our troops both here and abroad. Our troops should not see their honor sullied so that the moguls behind magazines like Playboy and Penthouse can profit. The ‘Military Honor and Decency Act’ will right a bureaucratic–and moral–wrong.”

Let me get this straight: you can die for your country, but you can’t squeeze out a few rounds for your own benefit? Dick. Link! [via Don't Taze Me Bro]

Beyond the Multiplex:

First of all, hasn’t anybody noticed that del Toro has repeatedly said he doesn’t like Tolkien, and that he never finished reading “The Lord of the Rings”? Here’s what he told me in Cannes in 2006, when I asked him about the influence of Tolkien and C.S. Lewis on his own work: “I was never into heroic fantasy. At all. I don’t like little guys and dragons, hairy feet, hobbits — I’ve never been into that at all. I don’t like sword and sorcery, I hate all that stuff.”

Let’s see, he doesn’t like “little guys and dragons” or hairy-footed hobbits, and “The Hobbit” would be a movie about what, exactly? Seriously, I think del Toro was speaking from the heart, and I think he’s right. His aesthetic is darker, more Gothic and more grotesque than the Tolkien-via-Jackson universe; it derives more from the medieval mire of middle-European fairy tale than from the high-toned, pre-modern northern European epics Tolkien was channeling. And I’m riding a major bummer if del Toro is shelving “3993″ (the third of his Spanish history-fantasy trilogy, after “Pan’s Labyrinth” and “The Devil’s Backbone”), his adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s “At the Mountains of Madness” or his “Doctor Strange” blockbuster. All three of those projects are vastly better fits than the hairy-footed little guys and dragons.

Like Del Toro, I’m not a fan of this kind of fantasy at all, and I totally agree with this writer on wishing Del Toro would do something from his infinite list of awesome vaporware projects. Just because he’s a fat, bearded genre director, doesn’t mean he has to take Peter Jackson’s sloppy seconds.

Oh, well. If Del Toro is distracted from “At the Mountains of Madness,” maybe I’ll still be able to take a stab at it. That’s one of my dream projects. Link!

Holy shit! Filmmaker/madman, Paul Verhoeven, director of RoboCop and Starship Troopers (and, yes, Showgirls), wants to make a movie about Jesus!

Here are a couple details about Verhoeven’s take, which sounds like the Anti- to Mel Gibson’s Christ. One of his conclusions deals with the fact that Jesus was probably the son of Mary and a Roman soldier who raped her during the Jewish uprising in Galilee. Verhoeven also claims that Christ was not betrayed by Judas Iscariot.

Link!

Atheists are moving up in the world! Unlike a few years ago, we aren’t the worst people in the world! Those would be the Scientologists!