Get Cynical

I thought last year’s was better.

A religious website that outs rock bands and musicians as gay or gay friendly. I can’t tell the difference between satire and religious silliness anymore so I have no idea if this is serious or not. Either way it’s pretty goddamn funny.

One of the most dangerous ways homosexuality invades family life is through popular music. Parents should keep careful watch over their children’s listening habits, especially in this Internet Age of MP3 piracy.

Here are a few bands to watch out for:

The Spores
Ravi Shankar
Bjork
The Doors
Phish
Queen
Metallica
The Rolling Stones
David Bowie
Jay-Z
Clay Aiken
Audioslave
Red Hot Chili Peppers
Panic at the Disco
Elton John(really gay)

Update:

The site seems to be down. Here’s the cached version.

Update 2:

Thanks to Gaby for this David Brent-like music video for the song “God Hates Fags” by the guy who did the LoveGodsway.org site. I’m almost certain it is satire now. You can’t take anybody with that kind of moustache seriously.

A few years ago we worked with Leif Segerstam, a composer/conductor from Finland. He had a remarkably creative way of using the English language, and as usual, I started writing my favourite quotes in our music. After a few days, I learned that several other members of the orchestra were doing the same thing. This is a compilation of our efforts.

A few examples:

I want the music more traumatised.

The string section without the basses is a plasmatic living cluster.

You have to become a little dirty about the fingerboard there.

More grease in the pianissimo.

This history lecture podcast covers the little known Byzantine Empire through the study of twelve of its greatest rulers. Mr. Lars Brownworth presents this series for free through this website and the podcast section of the iTunes store.

Mr. Brownworth teaches History at The Stony Brook School on Long Island, New York. His passion for Byzantine history has taken him on travels from the furthest reaches of the Byzantine Empire right into Constantinople, (present day Istanbul) the very heart of Byzantium. He has traveled and studied Byzantine history extensively and produced this lecture series giving us this concise overview.

Bizarre.

NEW YORK – A newcomer to the city became hopelessly lost for five days after going for a walk. Damon Mootoo was staying at his brother’s house in South Jamaica, Queens, when he decided to go for the stroll last Wednesday, 12 hours after arriving in New York for the first time, the Daily News reported Monday.

The 32-year-old man quickly got disorientated by the confusing streets of Queens.

On Sunday night, after a good Samaritan came to his aid, he was recovering at Jamaica Hospital from dehydration and frostbite.

Mootoo, who is hard of hearing but can communicate in English, said he didn’t ask for directions because he was afraid he’d be deported and because he had heard many scary stories about New York. He recently had received his permanent resident card.

The Samaritan, Michael Bharath, was walking home from church when he spotted Mootoo shivering on the street. After he and his wife made him a sandwich, Mootoo opened up and told them his story.

The Wyoming Incident (or The Wyoming Hijacking) is a lesser known case of television broadcast hijacking/hacking. A hacker managed to … all » interrupt broadcasts from a local programming channel (believed to serve several smaller communities in the county of Niobrara) and aired his/her own video. The video contained numerous clips of disembodied, human heads showing various emotions and “poses”. The camera position changed often (usually every ten-to-fifteen seconds) and the video was often interrupted by a “SPECIAL PRESENTATION” announcement. This clip is taken from one of these intervals.

The video is mostly locally well-known, and would probably not even be that popular if it were not for the effects it had on the few residents who watched it for an extended period of time. Complaints included vomiting, hallucinations, headaches, etc. While some believed it was paranormal, specialists have determined that the cause of these afflictions were frequencies played regularly throughout the broadcast. In this clip, the frequency being played is somewhere between 17 and 19 hz. This range of frequency, when played for long periods of time, causes the eyes to subtly vibrate, sometimes inducing visual hallucinations.

This video is significant in that is one of the most recent television hijackings. Such actions were rare even in the ’80s (search for Chicago Max Headroom Incident) and are even more rare today. The hacker has not yet been caught, and all attempts to trace the video have proven futile.

Related:

Wikipedia’s entry on Broadcast signal intrusion.

Why believing that a 300 million year old rock is only 6,000 years old is dangerous. (not to mention completely insane)

Standing at the bottom, calling out over the roar of the falls, I got to teach the exciting conclusion, “The layers of slate and shale beneath our feet tell us that 300 million years ago, this deciduous forest was a tropical jungle.”

“What book d’ya get that out of?” came the reply one day. And thus it began, for this waterfall was not only located in ancient rock, it was also in the heart of the Bible-belt. I had heard there were people who believed the Earth was only 6,000 years old, but I never thought I would actually meet any. That summer, and every other summer I worked teaching science to the public, I met a lot of them. Though most objectors would just walk away from the program, some mothers would cover their children’s ears to protect them from the “blasphemous park ranger.” One man, after I patiently explained how we know the age of rocks, finally just threw up his hands, exclaimed, “The Devil made that rock look that old to turn you away from God,” and led his family back up the trail.

At the time, to a college kid with a summer job, these responses seemed bizarre but relatively harmless – they were local, “everyone’s entitled to their own beliefs”, “no skin off my back”, “whatever”… But now, 15 years later, I understand these taunts to be the threat they truly are: dangerous beliefs made more dangerous because more and more people believe them.

Crap.

Being cynical can increase the risk of heart disease, US researchers claim.

A study of 6,814 people found that cynical distrust was associated with signs of inflammation which in turn increase the risk of heart disease.

Chronic stress and depression were also found to be associated with higher levels of certain inflammatory markers in the blood.

The Archives of Internal Medicine study suggests cynical people are more likely to lead unhealthy lifestyles.

Researchers from the University of Michigan asked participants to fill out a questionnaire that assessed a person’s risk of chronic stress or depression.

Cynical distrust was measured at a later follow-up visit.