"Nothing but the rain"
This is my 800th communication on Fooyah.net. As I have been quite angry recently you should be pleased to know that I have taken up paper folding for some of the day to calm me.
This is my armada of planes so far this year. Thanks to Penguin for the gift. Only another 300 or so to go!
I have to admit that I am still angry. The events of the last week have really annoyed me.
There’s all this hate in the world. Wouldn’t it be easier if we just followed the basic rule of “do no harm”. It’s not hard. It’s just three little words.
Now, I’ve an idea where we can start. Let’s have a look at the books where religious people get their morals and guidance.
“I will … smite Egypt with all my wonders.”
“God wants to be remembered forever for the mass murder of little children.”
“Kill … before the Lord and … sprinkle blood round about.”
“Both parties in adultery shall be executed.”
“God sends evil spirits that cause humans to deal treacherously with each other.”
“Beating your children will make them wise.”
“Jesus sits on a white cloud with a sharp sickle in his hand. When the angel tells him to reap, he kills all the people with his sickle”“Christians and Jews (who believe in only part of the Scripture), will suffer in this life and go to hell in the next.”
“Allah will punish the disbelieving Jews until the Day of Resurrection.”
“Those who oppose Allah and His messenger will burn in the fire of hell.”
“Allah curses people by making them deaf and blind.”
“Disbelievers will be given a painful doom.”
So, if your book of guidance includes passages like those above don’t you think it’s time to stop using that book for your religion. It’s no good saying we only look at the good bits that are relevant to us today, it doesn’t work like that. You lend credence to the whole book. It doesn’t take much to turn bored angry teenagers and men into violent arseholes and it happens everywhere but you using this book [just the good bits] mean that all of the book can be used to proselytise.
If your book says crap like the verses above then it is time to change the fucking book.
The Russian headline is there above to show that even non-religious countries can be fucking stupid. What a crock of shit. It feels like there’s a storm coming with all these governments cracking down on human rights.
Now, there’s a 0.001% of all people who are very very nasty [I made that statistic up]. But what atheists don’t do is go around doing things in the name of their religion or a shitty holy book.
How about we change all religious and governing rules into the following:
Be good, do no harm
There, that wasn’t so hard was it.
I titled this communication Rage. Using that word is wrong, this should really be titled “makes me slightly annoyed with modern life until I forget I saw it”, but that isn’t snappy and so I thought I’d follow the Dail Fail headline writers’ rules.
The following picture gives the options I found on a questionnaire for a company that rates childcare nurseries.
I am happy with the questions. I am very disappointed with the options for answers. This grading system is a bit like Ofsted criteria where satisfactory is bad and good is bad and excellent is the only thing that’s good. My issues are:
These sorts of thoughtless things make my head hurt when trying to figure out what they mean. I dislike things like this and would, if I cared enough, write to them and suggest how to improve their options. It is now time to forget about this questionnaire and to move on to things that are really annoying.
I ought to explain my hatred of the Daily Fail. If I ignore that fact that the company behind the Daily Fail probably doesn’t pay its share of tax (which might not be illegal but is definitely immoral) and ignoring the fact that the newspaper supported the fascists in the 1930s it is still a shockingly bad news website. The newspaper purports to be the moral and ethical backbone of the UK and yet it portrays all manner of poor behaviour and encourages readers to click on the right hand column.
I have big issues with headline writing in the online version of the Daily Fail which is one of the MOST visited websites in the WORLD [sad face]. I rarely read the print version because I get so annoyed by it I want to cause serious damage to the fabric of society that actually buys this shitpaper.
Here’s an example and a link to the original page if you want to:
Loom bands are small coloured rubber bands that people are weaving together to make bracelets and more. They are a productive, creative thing for people to do and I hope the manufacturers are making lots of money from them.
The headline states that a boy was blinded by a loom band.
When you then read the bullet points it turns out that he might be ok after surgery which is still pretty bad but not utter blindness. It also turns out that the boy was struck in his eye after his brother “accidentally” pinged a band at him. So it was the brother’s fault, and therefore, because the brother was young, this was the fault of the supervision of the child not the loom band itself. This is headline writing at its worst. It’s also making a “news” story out of nothing.
This article was written by Mr or Mrs Daily Mail Reporter. Even the staff know this is such a non-story and misleading that they don’t want their name attached to the story.
As for the boy who fell asleep with the bands on his fingers, he’s ok now. His mum took them off and his fingers are fine.
If you read this article [click on the picture] you will notice that the father took PHOTOS before taking off the loom bands. He can’t have been too worried then. If this had happened with boring office rubber bands do you think this would be in the news? No, it’s there because it’s a new children’s fad that Daily Fail writers don’t understand and so they fear the *new*.
Rage and anger and outrage at how such a rubbish website can be one of the most visited. Perhaps I judge by standards that are too high but I would like to think that there is a market for raising the intellectual game and making people *think*.