Moderator - The Art of the Prank

March 25, 2007January 15, 2019

God’s dupes by Sam Harris

This article from the LA Times, March 15, 2007 is so incisive and deserving of attention, I hope everyone reads it! Sam Harris is the author of “The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason” and “Letter to a Christian Nation.” -JS

Moderate believers give cover to religious fanatics — and are every bit as delusional.

Pete Stark, a California Democrat, appears to be the first congressman in U.S. history to acknowledge that he doesn’t believe in God. In a country in which 83% of the population thinks that the Bible is the literal or “inspired” word of the creator of the universe, this took political courage.

Of course, one can imagine that Cicero’s handlers in the 1st century BC lost some sleep when he likened the traditional accounts of the Greco-Roman gods to the “dreams of madmen” and to the “insane mythology of Egypt.”

Mythology is where all gods go to die, and it seems that Stark has secured a place in American history simply by admitting that a fresh grave should be dug for the God of Abraham “” the jealous, genocidal, priggish and self-contradictory tyrant of the Bible and the Koran. Continue reading “God’s dupes by Sam Harris”

March 21, 2007January 15, 2019

Culture Jamming Defined

Here’s a workable definition of Culture Jamming from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia -JS

Culture jamming is the act of transforming existing mass media to produce commentary about itself, using the original medium’s communication method. It is a form of public activism which is generally in opposition to commercialism, and the vectors of corporate image. The aim of culture jamming is to create a contrast between corporate or mass media images and the realities or perceived negative side of the corporation or media. This is done symbolically, with the “detournement” of pop iconography.

It is based on the idea that advertising is little more than propaganda for established interests, and that there is a lack of an available means for alternative expression in industrialized nations. Proponents see culture jamming as a resistance movement to the hegemony of popular culture, based on the ideas of “guerrilla communication”.

Culture jamming’s intent differs from that of artistic appropriation (which is done for art’s sake) and vandalism (where destruction or defacement is the primary goal), although its results are not always so easily distinguishable. See the rest at Wikipedia…

March 19, 2007January 15, 2019

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”