Happy Valentines Day, imonks. Grab your significant other, and hop in the Rambler.
Just in time for Valentine’s Day, there is this report: People who use emojis have sex more often. A lot more often, actually.
In unrelated news, I have now learned to how to insert emojis into blog posts. 
Which state is the most romantic? How would you even find out? Why, you would ask a fitness tracker company, of course. Myfitnesspal analyzed over 3 billion foods logged by its members in the diet logs, and also how many times “sex” was listed in the fitness log (it counts as exercise). The company then compiled a “romance index,” determined by which states ate the most chocolate, drank the most champagne and had the most sex. Who could argue with such rigorous methodology? Anyway residents of Arkansas averaged the most sex (apparently Bill Clinton still spends time there) while Rhode Island scored highest overall. Wyoming came in dead last.
150 ministers, priests, imams, rabbis and other faith leaders gathered at the Interfaith Conference on Drone Warfare at Princeton Theological Seminary in late January and have spent the weeks since drafting a statement that calls on the U.S. to halt targeted lethal drone strikes. “There are enough problems with the current drone policy and the use of drones that we need a break,” said the Rev. Richard Killmer, director of the conference. “Drones have become a weapon of first resort and not last resort. It has made it a lot easier to go to war.” What do you think, imonks? Are drones just the inevitable progress of weaponry, or a new and disturbing category of weapon?
Radio Shack announced last weekend that it is going belly up after 94 (!) years in business.
Novu Mutum, Brazil, was the scene of a crime of a rather … interesting crime this week. It seems two women showed up during the night at the local prison, dressed up in…well, let’s just show you what they were dressed up in
The women talked guards into letting them inside, seduced them, and spiked their drinks. The guards were found the next morning, naked, handcuffed and with no idea why 26 prisoners had escaped.
Also in Brazil, a woman is divorcing her husband after she set up a secret video cam in their apartment. But it’s not what you think. It turns out the woman viewed the tape and went ballistic after she discovered her husband had a habit of … headbutting the dog.
The course of true love never did run smooth…Charles Manson (yes, that Charles Manson) was all set to get married. Of course it did not bother him that he was 80 and his fiance was 27, or that he is ineligible for parole until 2027. What did bother him, and what killed the planned nuptials, was when he discovered her ulterior motive. Apparently she only wanted his body (but not in the usual way). Under California law, a widow has the right to her deceased husband’s body. The young lady wanted to set up Manson’s corpse in a glass coffin and open up a tourist attraction. Manson thought the plot was “stupid” since he will “never die”, but called off the wedding anyway. On principle, apparently.
“When we hear that people have meetings about how to preserve creation, we can say: ‘No, they are the greens!’ No, they are not the greens! This is the Christian! This is ‘our response to the’ first creation ‘of God. And’ our responsibility. A Christian who does not protect Creation, who does not let it grow, is a Christian who does not care about the work of God, that work that was born from the love of God for us. And this is the first response to the first creation: protect creation, make it grow. ” From Pope Francis’ message at Monday’s Mass.
Very sad about Jon Stewart leaving The Daily Show, but this might be the perfect opportunity for Brian Williams. He already has experience doing fake news. 
Gallup has found that in only three states (Massachusetts, Vermont and Hawaii) do more people label themselves as liberals than conservatives. In the other 47, conservatives outnumber the other side, sometimes by large margins (36 points in Mississippi). Nationwide, the nation is 38 percent conservative, 34 percent moderate and 24 percent liberal. 
Did you know dinosaurs did drugs? Well, they did. New discovery of dino diets suggests they regularly ate a hallucinogenic fungus ergot that (in humans, at least) causes mental and physical reactions similar to LSD. Hmmm. No wonder Barney always seemed a little…odd.
And did you know that North Korea is turning 70? I bet you didn’t even send a card, you capitalist running dog. The Worker’s Party of Korea (motto: “you work; we party”) is marking the occasion by publicizing 300 official patriotic slogans which will be displayed on billboards across the country. According to CNN, they will include:
- Let us build a fairyland for the people by dint of science!
- Let us turn ours into a country of mushrooms by making mushroom cultivation scientific, intensive and industrialized!
- Let this socialist country resound with the song of big fish haul and be permeated with the fragrant smell of fish and other seafoods!
- Let the strong wind of fish farming blow across the country!
- Let the laughter of the children ring by increasing the production of their foodstuffs!
- Play sports games in an offensive way, the way the anti-Japanese guerrillas did!
- Obama always goes reckless in words and deeds like a monkey in a rain forest!
The nation’s largest Christian Book Store Chain, Family Christian, filed for bankruptcy this week. The CEO said, however, that they expect to close none of their 250 stores. I have no idea how that works, but I am very relieved I will still have a source to buy my Rejoice in the Lord Dipping Bowl with Spreader or the Metal Measuring Spoons Set w/ Cross Emblem or the Psalm 96:1 Headphones.
Some guys from Wisconsin decided to create the icehenge you see below on a frozen lake. Apparently some guys from Wisconsin have too much time on their hands in the winter. 
Men are from Mars, Jesus was from Venus? The BBC show Big Questions last Sunday explored that very worthy topic. For 23minutes the host and his guests tackled the question on everyone’s mind: “Have beings from other planets guided our religions?” Mark Bennett from the Aetherius Society: “We believe that various religious leaders from history have an inter-planetary origin. We believe that Jesus and Buddha came from Venus, that Sri Krishna came from Saturn, that Saint Peter came from Mars, and so on.” Of course, we cannot see ‘Venusion’ settlment because they are so technologically and spiritually advanced that they exist at a “higher frequency of vibration.” Thankfully, the host offered equal time to the other side in this controversial debate.
NASA released some new pics from the Hubble this week, including one which looks like an inter-galactic Kool-Aid Man (or, as some are calling it, the smile of God). The bright glowing eyes are in fact separate galaxies, while the face and smile are due to the celestial effect known as “strong gravitational lensing.”
Finally, last week I linked to an upcoming seminar on Queer Agriculture at Berkeley’s Center for the Study of Sexual Culture. Most of us were amused by the pretentious (yet grammatically inept) academese of the event description. Well the CSSC is a gift that keeps on giving (and taking your tax dollars). Next up is a talk titled, Vaginal Impressions, and I can’t help but quote the description in full. Enjoy.
This talk proposes that the notion of the human nervous system as an impressible, malleable entity continuously remade by contact with its environment lies at the heart of nineteenth-century U.S. cultural politics. Theorizing “impressibility” as a nineteenth-century keyword linking race and sexuality, the talk explores how scientists, reformers, and writers alike saw themselves as working in concert with a neurobiological substrate that they conceived of as, in its ideal form, fluid, malleable, and forever in dynamic exchange with surrounding bodies, objects, and forces. I show how the modern formations of race and sexual difference consolidated in part as a discourse of the variegated capacity of neurological responsiveness. Before genetics, sensory contact between bodies and the differentially affective qualities of the human nervous system was understood to shape hereditary legacies. The talk’s investigation of the pre-determinist materiality of the body provides an important perspective on the biopolitics of affect and the stakes of feminist materialisms.
The Internet Monk Archives 
Ooh, lemme guess…..one of those southeast Asian countries…Cambodia? Or whatever it’s called these days?
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Right Dr. FundP. The cryptic reference to Lamarkian genetics was obvious, even to this Animal Science major.
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As for Christian literature, most of what I’ve encountered in that genre at Christian bookstores (very little, admittedly) could be classified as literature only in the loosest of terms.
Yep. Gotta be careful at a joint like Family Christian and the sort of material they stock their shelves with. Why, once when I was strolling through their aisles, I came across a book titled “Mere Churchianity” written buy a guy I’d never heard of named Michael Spencer. It interested me, I bought it, loved it, learned about internetmonk which visit nearly every day. That book was somewhat of a life changer.
Family Christian can’t be all bad.
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“Never heard to The Shack? Do you actually consider yourself a Christian, then??? ”
I am delightfully far outside of The Bubble.
But I did look-up The Shack and read the synopsis. Huh; that reminds me of what I found so odd about “Christian” fiction. I don’t see myself adding it to my must-read list.
I can see what it would be popular though; most In-Bubble people I know seem convinced that packs of little girl killing predators are roaming the landscape; this would play to their narrative.
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Daniel – all of the Chick tracts can be read online. Google will get you there.
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Well Prof Schuller is murdering something that’s for sure.
Folks what do think someone in 1970 would say if they knew that 45 years later two Beatles would be dead and Charlie Manson would still be making headlines?
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And since it’s Valentine’s Day, we shouldn’t forget about that funky little shack:
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If there are Bronies, why aren’t their Blo-arneys?
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It starts from the end of the Qing Dynasty.
Trivia question: in what other country is it now the year 103 (soon to be 104)?
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Yes, indeed.
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Don’t forgot your unmarried readers. Over 40, still a virgin, never married here.
Happy Valetine’s Day to all the single and celibate adults out there.
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Wow. And how do you recall/find all this stuff?
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“Hey, baby, how would you like to come over to my iPad?”
“No, thanks.”
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It was Jack Chick, from his “comic” book “Sabotage”:
“Its a heavenly cavern so gigantic and brilliantly beautiful that words cannot describe it. It was found by gigantic lenses plus long exposures of photographic plates. Astronomers agree its huge opening is more than 16 trillion miles in diameter… Its exquisite beauty and luminous colours are unlike anything on this earth. Professor Learkin at Mt Lowe observatory gives us the following description: ‘for the depths of the Orion Nebula appear like torn and twisted objects and river masses of shining glass, irregular pillars, columns of stalactites in glittering splendor and stalagmites from the clear walls of ivory and pearl, studded with millions of diamonds and shining stars’… This could well be the entrance into the glory of Heaven, that we’ll pass through at the Rapture”.
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I get satire, but we’re dealing with post-modernistic evangelicalism, which often is stranger than the most satirical fiction.
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I’m not so sure. Remember the Hubble image of the “eye” of God? A lot of people took that pretty seriously. Then I recall someone (I believe Jack Chick) claiming that astronomers discovered the gates of heaven, which was in fact a nebula.
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Every time I hear the word “drone warfare” I think of Fred Saberhagen’s “Berserker” series.
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I’m in! I’ll give up sky diving and mountain climbing at the same time.
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I find your comments to be very readable.
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So, do people who surf the internet with tablets get less lovin’ than people who surf with a device that has a keyboard?
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I’m afraid Poe’s Law is operating with a vengeance, guys. Stephen is mocking the atrocious prose of the summary for the Berkeley conference. He isn’t REALLY talking about murder . . .right, Stephen? Stephen . . .?
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Ah, this is how The Engineers control human evolution.
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(Darn, iPad typed emojis don’t work on website comments 🙂 )
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???? RESTORED!
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@ Steve, Hi Steve et al., What does Christ say about this guy who murdered someone and. Is now spending his life in prison? What does He say about how we should feel?
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Ha ha! I noticed that too.
Perhaps as the Rambler gets nearer Easter, we will be hoping down the bunny trail…
People, the general rule in English (I suppose there are exceptions…there are always exceptions) is that adding a “silent e” to a syllable makes the preceding vowel long, and when adding an “ed” or an “ing” the final consonant must be doubled to maintain the short vowel, otherwise it becomes long. I hop that is clear (Mike Bickle notwithstanding).
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@jazzi, ever read “The Egg and I?”
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Never heard to The Shack? Do you actually consider yourself a Christian, then??? 😉
God Lord, that was a horribly written book. I actually enjoyed some of the theology in it, but wading through the prose was painful, painful, painful. I’m writing a novel myself, and my fear is that it’s as poorly written as The Shack. Seriously, when I started reading The Shack, I just prayed, “Lord, please let my writing be better than this.”
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God loves Babesiosis?
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Yes, the last 2 or 3 have been whackily wonderful.
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It is so good to see Saturday Ramblings rising to, and quite possibly surpassing the glory days of levity. Well done!
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“It’s a mutual, joint-stock world, in all meridians. We cannibals must help these Christian.”
Ishmael thinking Queequeg’s thoughts for him, Chapter 13: Wheelbarrow, Moby Dick
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The paragraph from Berkley is not difficult to understand. It is, however, complete hokum. This is a very real and ongoing problem in American Academics – there are schools that teach actual science and generally hold a critical-realist epistemology, and then there are schools that teach a bunch of pseudo-science and pretend that it is meaningful (and generally hold to a post-modern epistemology, which they sort of have to to justify their existence). I’m not saying the latter is wrong, but I think the type of education there is about what one might get from a religious institution – a bunch of socio-cultural beliefs justified post hoc with a lot of words.
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“Many miles away
there’s a shadow on the door
of a” shack on “the shore
of a dark
Scottish lake…
Many miles away…
Many miles away…”
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Are drones just the inevitable progress of weaponry, or a new and disturbing category of weapon?
Um…yes?
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The one person I know whose mother was violently murdered when he was a child does not at all wish for the death penalty for the convicted. I think we should be careful about projecting how we think we might feel onto people who have actually had to feel.
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Well…Radio Shack had an ad campaign a few years back where they rebranded as “The Shack”. So there’s your weird SMR synchronicity.
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This is true, too.
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Sounded like typical Berserkely Superior Intellect(TM) to me.
The type of thing the Superior Intellect who came up with it would require everyone to learn and recite “at gunpoint, if necessary” if he only had the Power.
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“We are merciful.”
Except to the murdered and their families who have to live with the knowledge that their loved one’s killer is playing monopoly in a prison rec room somewhere.
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The the thought of BBQ sauce pops into your head, breaking the spell. You salivate and grab that chicken!
… or in this case the carcass of a psycho… so, no. That’s Icky.
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Counting from the year Great Leader Comrade Kim Il-Sung created the universe.
That is the official Party Line.
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The first rule of data analysis: Everything means less than it appears to.
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“You look into the eyes of a chicken, and you lose yourself in a completely flat, frightening stupidity.”
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There is something to be said for doing a thing for its rightness whether or not it yields any measurable outcome.
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We all “hope in the Rambler”. That’s why we always stop by on Saturday mornings.
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The event is free, open to the public, and within driving distance of me. Must resist temptation… (for self inflicted mental abuse, not capital punishment)
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Babesia parasites also form the shape of a cross when reproducing within one of your red blood cells. I wonder what God was trying to tell us with that…
My work is in cell biology, and once or twice a year in our office someone will look through the microscope and see a white blood cell in the shape of a smiley face, or a heart, or a question mark, or something else entertaining, and email a picture to everyone else. It’s an interesting quirk of the human brain that patterns like that (especially faces) tend to pop out at us.
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Actually, Tebow threw for 289 _meters_ in that game. Hence the excitement among readers of The Way Out There, whose Gospel of Axquarx ,chapter 2, verse 89, reads, “For God so loved Venus, but Mars? Not so much.”
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Generally I oppose the death penalty except under a very very select number of instances one of which is doing to the English language what Prof Schuller has done. Of course every case is different and must be decided on its own merits. If this is her first offense then life imprisonment without parole might be indicated. We are merciful.
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Haha, you pretty much summed up my entire post below with this single line.
+1
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There are so many stars in the sky, thus with that many data points to work with, you could probably find a combination of stars to produce a picture of practically “anything” that exists. That’s why I’m not impressed when someone finds a little detail about an aspect of nature and uses that to argue for the existence of God. As for another example (in biology): when people see the picture of the laminin cell (which happens to be in the shape of a cross) and claim “look, that’s God directly showing his handiwork to us!” This reading-too-much-into-something type of mindset only hurts the cause of those trying to tear down the wall that many have fabricated between science and faith.
This often happens even outside the realm of science as well; when we take certain things that happen as a “sign” from God (which sometimes may be true, but far more often than not I imagine that’s not the case). I remember when Tim Tebow threw for 316 yards in that playoff win against the Steelers and of course there were those who were saying after the game that it was no coincidence, that it must have been a message from God! (alluding of course to the verse John 3:16, probably the most widely-known Bible verse). We have been falsely-interpreting signs from God since the very beginning…
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Sort of undoes the whole idea that the Incarnation was unique. If this is the case, then why is Hinduism incorrect, with it’s many divine avatars? What difference does it make if God became incarnate more than once, whether it was down the street or across the galaxy?
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Daniel is operating at the Jeff Dunn level for Rambling. Keep up the good work!
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I’ve never heard of ‘The Shack’.
Count yourself among the Elect.
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The problem with defining enemy combatants in the current “war on terror” is that, usually, war is waged between sovereign nations; in the case of this conflict, however, we are “waging war” against combatants from many nations with whom we are not at war, and routinely violating the sovereignty of nations to attack the “targets” in them without declaring war against those states. This situation is moral quicksand, and it can only lead to the further loss of any hope for moral clarity, however slim that hope might be under even the “ordinary” conditions of modern warfare.
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“The one thing Fifty Shades of Gray & The Shack have in common is that both are very popular and both very, very poorly written.”
I’ve never heard of “The Shack”.
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Or in other words, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
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i was hoping they’d close. How much cheap, Communist China made tea holders and camo pencil cases with Bible verses or crosses imprinted on them does the world need?
As for Christian literature, most of what I’ve encountered in that genre at Christian bookstores (very little, admittedly) could be classified as literature only in the loosest of terms. The one thing Fifty Shades of Gray & The Shack have in common is that both are very popular and both very, very poorly written. The main reason, I think, a place like Family Christian survives at all is to keep that Christian bubble intact, away from the world because we all know that as soon as a Christian enters “the world”, he or she will be instantly sucked in and all sorts of evil mayhem will commence. Best just to hunker down & only read appropriate Family Christian books.
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I don’t know. The look to me seems to say “when is this old dude going to die so I can make some money off the body?”
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You know, it’s a little intimidating to write these posts when so many of you commenters are a lot smarter than me. I’m always amazed at the facts and insights you all bring to the table, many of which I had not even thought of. Thanks for the additional info on the gravitational lensing.
I’m hoping the people who referred to it as God’s smile were being tongue-in-cheek. But I am a little naive in my hoping sometimes.
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Apparently North Korea has its own calendar too. They number years based on the birth of Kim Il-sung. It is the year 103 in North Korea.
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On Jesus being from Venus, I first heard this one back in 1972 while street witnessing on the campus of Michigan Uni. The guy who brought up the subject was a rather odd fellow who claimed he was a “roadie” with Izzy Pop and The Stooges.
Just goes to show: some stupid ideas have eternal life!
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I am SO much HAPPIER with silliness than I am with portentous, heavy and sarcastic on a Saturday morning (or Friday night here in SoCal).
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Yeah, something about that look is disconcerting
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“Drones strikes are a form of assassination; isn’t assassination as a tactic of warfare illegal according to international law?”
From what I understand, Reagan signed Executive Order 12333 into law in 1981, which states that no person employed by the US government shall engage in assassination. However, the term “assassination” was left undefined. It is often defined as something like “political killing by surprise”.
A key issue is whether we are at war with the people targeted. If so, they would be technically “enemy combatants” and, I think, would not be subject to the executive order.
In terms of international law, I think the situation is in a little flux (because of the drone technology) but the general feeling is that such killings from afar can only be justified as an act of self-defense; that is, the country doing the killing would have to be able to show the victims were posing an “imminent” threat.
I’m just trying to give context to future discussions, not advocating a policy. I am very troubled by our use of drones. But I am not sure I would completely ban them or not.
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Sorry about the drop in your romance index. Especially today. Try texting some emojis, perhaps?
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Hi Clark
You’re welcome. And you’re right; I had forgotten how they wanted all my info for the most minor of purchases. Another reason for their demise is reflected in the post below, which highlights a full page 1991 ad for Radio Shack and points out how the function of every one of these gadgets (except for the massive speaker and the radar detector) can now be done on a standard smartphone.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-cichon/radio-shack-ad_b_4612973.html
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The galactic “smile” is actually proof of the theory of relativity’s concept of gravitationally-induced warps in the space-time continuum. Orest Chwolson predicted gravitational lensing as early as 1924; Einstein wrote on the subject in 1936, but claimed we would never have instruments sensitive enough to observe it. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_lens ), But instead of that reality blowing our minds, we see that image and think it is “god” smiling down on us. Some days I wish I had studied anthropology in school; that response is fascinating to me. It is so primitive but lacking in wonder. Perhaps that is the nature post-modernism: our minds overload on the amount of information we are forced to digest that our brains reset to a primeval state. Perhaps the longing to belong are greater than that sense of wonder.
I for one hope it is not God; The Father up above is looking down with…creepy, glowing, beady little eyes.
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Transactions like this are relatively common; well maybe not the salvage and donate, but mode change [public->private, etc…] is not uncommon. There are various categories of bankruptcy [protection], many business go bankrupt repetitively without ceasing operations.
Not saying it makes any sense.
But it kinda does for these guys. I can see the operation of a far-right Christian bookstore as an NP; there are people who would donate $$$ to maintain the presence of Christian Literature within their community.
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Jesus from Venus…
As Larry Norman sang
and if there’s life on other planets
then I’m sure that He must know
and He’s been there once already
and has died to save their souls
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” The opinion of a bunch of clergy will have exactly no affect on US military policy.”
Yep. Exercise in futility.
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Is it just me or did this week’s ramblings post reach a new high-water mark in silliness (which is a good thing, btw)?
No, it’s definitely not me. Daniel, we salute you!….
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The Family Christian bankruptcy seems a little odd. Apparently, 3 businessmen bought the company and is using bankruptcy to donate it to a non-profit. No store is closing. I have never heard of any transaction like it.
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People that use emojis have more sex. Any chance that’s because high school and college students are using emojis while most folks over the age of 40 don’t know what they are or how to use them?
The state tourism slogan for the state of Virginia is “Virginia is for lovers.” The original slogan was “Virginia is for history lovers” but somehow that never caught on.
Maybe if Radio Shack didn’t require your name, address, email, telephone and social security numbers every time you needed to buy a pack of AA batteries we wouldn’t have all left to do business elsewhere.
Thanks Dan!
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I always thought Barney was a little weird. Now I know why. “Super-de-dooper!”
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I think emojis are beings from another planet, and they are guiding the psycho/spiritual evolution of human sexuality.
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Manson looks old and feeble, but that young woman has a frightening look in her eyes.
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Maybe a good discipline for Lent would be to abstain from emojis….
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I think the term progress of weaponry is an oxymoron.
Drones strikes are a form of assassination; isn’t assassination as a tactic of warfare illegal according to international law? Or maybe that’s just a quaint notion I picked up somewhere along the line. But honestly: what could possibly be more immoral than the state-sponsored terrorism of nuclear deterrence? Yet, this strategy was accepted long ago, and shows no sign of going away. The opinion of a bunch of clergy will have exactly no affect on US military policy.
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In my immediate future? A Church valentine’s banquet with my beloved wife this very night. Should be fun.
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I got a pretty good score on the verbal section of the SAT’s but I still couldn’t understand the talk description you quoted…
Icehenge – where did Wisconsin rank on the MyFitnessPal romance index?
drones – I remember reading something (it was a while back) about how in areas (it was either in Iraq or Afghanistan) where drones attacks were common/active, the civilian population was too spooked to do much of anything so they stayed inside all the time fearful of being attacked. PTSD type effects. I could see that having moral implications in how we conduct war. “What do you think, imonks? Are drones just the inevitable progress of weaponry, or a new and disturbing category of weapon?” – They can be both. Any new disruptive technology will have effects that we didn’t consider beforehand.
Daniel, the Barney image showed up rather large in feedly for this article. I think my romance index dropped precipitously as a result. Oh well, Happy Valentine’s day!
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