I support #BoycottStarWarsVII

Every time I go on the damn internet there’s this terrible annoying “SQUEEEE!” noise everywhere. Some new movie trailer is playing on half the computers on the network, I think.

I confess, I felt a strange Force tugging at me too when I saw that — I saw the original on opening day in 1977, I enjoyed The Empire Strikes Back, felt the disappointment of Return of the Jedi, although I had a kid then who was totally into it. And then came the horrible, awful, tedious prequels, and now JJ Abrams is in charge? Bleh. I’m not expecting much, which means I might actually enjoy it, thanks to diminished expectations.

But then there is other optimistic news: the racists have announced a boycott, because it features a black character in a leading role. I approve. Just stay home, racists, from everything.

Apparently the two leading characters are a black man and a woman. Can we dare to hope that the MRAs will also announce a boycott? If all the awful people would just withdraw from the world and sit and stew and fume all by themselves in hermitic isolation, the world would be a better place.

Good news, everybody!

I mentioned before that there was a rally yesterday for the Morris Area High School Gay Straight Alliance. This organization has been in limbo for about 3 years as school officials resisted acknowledging the existence of gay students…and also ignored the bullying that goes on.

As is common in small towns, this has been a hot topic in letters to the editor in our local paper. There have been strong letters in favor, and weasely legalistic letters urging caution. I haven’t seen any anti-gay letters, which is a real sign of progress, but just whining stuff as opponents try to find a way to avoid approval, despite the fact that it is required that they allow it.

So they rallied last night, the school board met, and the school board voted to approve the Morris Area High School Gay Straight Alliance at last. There were only two votes against, although the school board chair did try to sour the whole thing by reading out a statement that they’re only approving it because federal law requires them to do so — a kind of graceless confession that they’ve been in the wrong, and that they’re not happy about having to do what is right.

But still…it’s a victory for goodness and justice and equality. I’ll have to check out the Morris paper this weekend to learn how other members of the community react.

“A nasty little theocracy in a shopping mall”

I’ve heard a lot about Dubai, but honestly, it’s one of the few places on the planet I never want to visit. Zero interest. Actively repelled. And I’d like to visit Antarctica someday!

Building giant skyscrapers and “entertainment complexes” has no appeal — it doesn’t make for an interestingly human place. Here’s a wonderfully brutal rant about Dubai.

Dubai, on the other hand, markets itself as fun in the sun, a kind of Las Vegas on the Persian Gulf. Yet it has far more in common with Saudi Arabia than you’d imagine. Before you say, “But Alex, Dubai is the forward looking part of the Middle East that wants to engage with the world,” I invite you to consider the case of Marte Deborah Dalelv.

Dalelv is a Norwegian fashion designer who was on a business trip in Dubai in 2013. During an evening out, she was raped. She later reported her attack to the police. The authorities’ reaction? Ms Dalelv was charged with perjury, having extramarital sex and drinking alcohol. She received a 16-month jail sentence.

It’s full of entertaining bon mots, too.

Bigger, better, higher, glitzier, nastier: it’s like an entire city designed by Donald Trump.

Aaaah! Run away, run away!

The One True Christian™ Big Boat

From that last post, I wanted to single out one of the criticisms Answers in Genesis has of other people’s renderings of the book of Genesis.

10. Ark looks like a bathtub with happy animals sticking out of it

That’s an odd complaint. So children’s books are all bad because they have cartoonish simplifications of the old myth? This collection of medieval and more recent art showing the Ark is all wrong?

1846_Edward_Hicks_Noahs_Ark

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How to interpret the Bible literally

Bodie Hodge of Answers in Genesis wants you to know that you’ve been talking about the book of Genesis all wrong. Heretics, every one of you.

  1. The globe looks like it does today: This would specifically be before the Flood in Genesis 6–8.

  2. Leaving open evolutionary ideas

  3. Not including extinct creatures like dinosaurs on Day Six

  4. Putting modern variations of animals in the creation scene

  5. Drawing Adam and Eve with very light skin and blond hair and blue eyes

  6. Making an apple the fruit

  7. Having a serpent without some form of upright posture or appendages during the deception: Genesis 3:1 calls it a serpent

  8. Neglecting that God sacrificed animals to cover Adam and Eve

  9. When illustrating Cain and Abel, we often get the impression they were the only two kids Adam and Eve had at the time

  10. Ark looks like a bathtub with happy animals sticking out of it

  11. Not including dinosaurs and pterodactyls (e.g., dragons) on the Ark

  12. Putting too many individuals of a kind on the Ark

  13. Tower of Babel being rounded

  14. Tower of Babel reaches so high into the atmosphere that its top is covered with high cirrus clouds

  15. The Tower being only partially built (i.e., a foundation)

  16. Not using biblical dates

  17. Calling the accounts “stories”

  18. Don’t paraphrase the Bible—use a respectable translation

  19. Placing the Garden of Eden based on post-Flood geography

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